


Buns in the Oven

by poplarpando



Category: Fantastic Four, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Biology, Blood, Eggpreg, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Miscarriage, Mpreg, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2018-10-29 17:47:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 40,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10858983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poplarpando/pseuds/poplarpando
Summary: “How’re you holding up?” He asked, then immediately winced because really? That’s what his brain was going with?“Oh, you know,” Johnny huffed a slightly shaky laugh, but the relative normalcy of the question seemed to loosen something in his posture that Peter hadn’t even realized was wound tight. “I managed to get myself knocked up with my best friend’s alien babies – I’m my own issue of the Weekly World News. Other than that, I’m just grand.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally meant to be for Spideytorch week, but I was late. Oh well. This is marked as complete, but I might continue it (show the progression of the 'pregnancy' etc.) with enough interest from others, and time from myself.
> 
> Note: The dubious consent tag is because of sexual activity while the sobriety of both parties, and therefore their ability to give consent, is in question.

“What,” Peter, uncharacteristically speechless, couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from Johnny, particularly the faint glow he could just see through his t-shirt, orange and warm like banked embers.

 

“Thanks for that stunning declaration of enthusiasm, Pete,” Johnny rolled his eyes, faux casually resting a hand over that glow, either to hide or protect it. Maybe both.

 

“When?” Peter tried on a different ‘w’ word, to see if it’d fit better. Reed coughed quietly, Ben started snickering, and Sue and Johnny gave him identical unimpressed looks like only siblings can.

 

“We believe the catalyst came from Cephei XII, after we assisted the Cepheans in repairing and improving their planetary shielding –“ Reed started to explain, until Johnny interrupted him.

 

“Yeah, yeah, we all remember the flaming lizard people around the giant unstable star, Reed.”

 

“Technically, RW Cephei is an orange hypergiant variable sta–“

 

“Anyways,” Ben interrupted Reed this time, clapping a hand on Peter’s shoulder to shake him playfully. “What I wanna know, is when you plan on makin’ an honest man out of Matchstick, here.”

 

“What?!” Peter repeated himself, then shook his head to snap out his surprised stupor, and held up a hand. “How did this happen?”

 

“Well, Webhead, when two losers love each other very much –” Ben started, until a small forcefield wrapped itself around his mouth.

 

“That’s enough, Ben,” Sue admonished him, dropping the barrier with a wave of her hand once he closed his mouth contritely. “ _How_ it happened is less important than the fact that it _has_ happened, and the eggs, from what we can tell so far, are viable. They’re a mixture of Johnny’s and your DNA, plus some of the alien catalyst.”

 

“We thought you oughta know,” Johnny finished, voice small, and Peter’s gaze once again gravitated to him, and that faint glow behind his hand, _inside him_.

 

Peter couldn’t decide if he wanted to kiss him or cry; the indecision left him feeling rather faint.

 

“We’ll let the two of you talk,” Sue said, pausing to clasp the back of her little brother’s neck with a hand, lightly trailing it up into the halo of his golden hair, before turning away, ushering the other two men out of the room.

 

Several long minutes passed in silence between them, neither of them quite willing to look at the other yet always drawn back, like their own personal gravity wells. Eventually, Peter moved to perch on the coffee table in front of Johnny, framed just so between the sprawl of his legs from the couch.

 

Unbidden, the parallel brought the night that started all this to his mind in flashes: Celebratory drinks for everyone, including Johnny drinking some specialty that looked like molten lava. Stumbling back toward their rooms together, Johnny warm against his side even through his protective suit. A friendly, drunken good night hug that transformed somehow into sloppy kisses. Johnny removing their suits with surprising deftness while Peter backed him first against the wall hungrily, then later toward the bed. Flailing around the bed in a clumsy, desperate search for lubrication, until a combination of Johnny’s needy and insistent tugging pulled him down to straddle his chest. The liquid warmth of Johnny, driving him crazy. Later, and the strike of inspiration that led to round two, Johnny’s legs thrown over his shoulders, spasming uncontrollably. The tight, clenching heat of him as his legs dropped wide open. Frantic, bruising kisses and lines of blazing heat down his back as everything built up between them. Sweat slicked hair falling into his eyes as Johnny – flushed attractively pink but annoyingly non-sweaty – gasped and shuddered underneath him from little aftershocks of pleasure. Falling asleep with one of Johnny’s legs thrown over him, then waking with a mouth full of blond hair and alarms ringing in the room and his head, both of them scrambling for their suits without acknowledging the previous night’s events. Johnny acting the same to him as always, and eventually deciding he must not remember that night.

 

He couldn’t find the words to ask about that, though, so he settled with a quiet. “Hi.”

 

Johnny seemed to be having similar trouble; he dredged up a weak smile from somewhere, though, and Peter’s heart lurched a little. “Hey.”

 

“How’re you holding up?” He asked, then immediately winced because really? That’s what his brain was going with?

 

“Oh, you know,” Johnny huffed a slightly shaky laugh, but the relative normalcy of the question seemed to loosen something in his posture that Peter hadn’t even realized was wound tight. “I managed to get myself knocked up with my best friend’s alien babies – I’m my own issue of the Weekly World News. Other than that, I’m just _grand_.”

 

Peter winced a little. “Fair enough,” he hesitated for a moment, trying to think of some better way to put it than just blurting it out, then ended up just blurting it out anyway. “How much do you remember?”

 

Johnny shifted on the couch a little, sitting up straighter and coincidentally scooting back from Peter. “About what?”

 

“You know what,” he replied, unwilling to play dumb now that it was at least out there. “The night I helped put an alien bun in your oven.”

 

Johnny made a face at him, “That was terrible.”

 

“I know,” he acknowledged, giving a little ‘What can you do?’ shrug. “Answer me anyway.”

 

“Well,” Johnny started, thoughtfully. “I don’t remember the name of the special drink zaX’roLeen gave me that Reed thinks caused this,” It took Peter a moment to remember that zaX’roLeen was the member of the Cephean delegation assigned to look after them. “But what happened that night, between the two of us? ... I remember all of that.”

 

The glow under Johnny’s shirt pulsed brighter briefly, and Peter made an aborted reach toward it. He got goosebumps. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

 

“Why didn’t _you_?” Johnny countered and okay, that was fair.

 

“I was going to, the next morning,” he mumbled, a little embarrassed. “Then there was the thing with the space pirates trying to steal the new shield system, and then there was the whole prison fiasco, then we were on our way back, with a million and one things waiting for us, and…” He scratched the back of his head, vaguely wishing for the comforting anonymity of his mask, even if it wouldn’t help here. “I guess I just decided that it’d become one of those ‘what happens in Vegas’ kind of moments.”

 

Johnny nodded along a little as he spoke – that _had_ been a pretty crazy time – then shook his head at the end. “Suppose I,” he started, then licked his lips self-consciously; Peter’s eyes fixated on the wet shine on his pink lips. “Suppose I… didn’t want it to be one of those things –”

 

Johnny seemed to be mustering his resolve for something, and Peter’s heart sank a little, “We can just act like–”

 

Johnny spoke over him. “Suppose I wanted more of that, but here.”

 

Peter’s jaw dropped a little. “What?”

 

“You’re officially banned from using that word again today,” Johnny huffed, starting to blush with embarrassment. “If you don’t want to, just say so.”

 

“No!” He yelped, then immediately leaned forward, crawling almost halfway into Johnny’s lap as if to physically keep him from misunderstanding his exclamation. “I actually, uh, _do_. Want to, that is.”

 

Johnny’s other hand had moved to protectively cover his midsection when Peter moved. As he registered what he said, though, he hesitantly moved his hands to Peter’s waist, squeezing lightly, experimentally. The light from his mostly-uncovered middle glowed between them. “Yeah?”

 

“Yeah,” Peter smiled, then hesitantly raised one hand a little. “Can I, uh…”

 

“No of course not; I never want you to touch me again,” Johnny replied sarcastically, rolling his eyes as he reached for his shirt and pushed it toward his armpit, then tried to lean back into the couch a bit more.

 

“Be careful what you wish for,” he snarked back automatically, but his attention was clearly focused on Johnny’s midsection; realistically, it still looked as toned, and in Peter’s opinion lickable, as before, but just knowing there were little lives in there made him seem… softer, or something. He removed his gloves and webshooters hastily, able to feel the heat on his hands before he’d even touched that glow. It seemed to him that Johnny’s body was like a furnace, or maybe a lantern, with a ball of heat and fire on the inside, so hot and bright it glowed all the way to the outside of him.

 

“Is your abdomen on fire?” he asked, eventually.

 

“Sort of?” Johnny shrugged a bit helplessly, lacing one of his hands with Peter’s over his stomach. “Reed was working on that before you got here; as I understand it, part of the reason the eggs are viable means that part of my insides are stuck ‘flamed on’, like an incubator. Or something.”

 

“So I really did put a bun in your oven,” Peter hummed, tugging their joined hands up so he could kiss Johnny’s knuckles.

 

“Shut up,” Johnny huffed, pushing ineffectually at Peter’s face with his free hand, while simultaneously trying to pull him closer with their joined hands. Peter obligingly dipped forward enough that Johnny could kiss him. “And it’d be ‘buns’, anyway.”

 

Right, there was more than one egg. “So how many are there?”

 

“We’re not quite sure,” he hedged. “They’re all lumped together in one big mass, and with how hot they are, they don’t quite read distinctly on Reed’s equipment, yet at least.” Johnny rolled his eyes, and Peter nodded knowingly; knowing Reed, this ‘oversight’ would be fixed within the week. “It looks like there might be as many as six, though.”

 

Peter whistled lowly, imagining it, staring at Johnny’s stomach as if that would somehow allow him to see them. Reluctantly, he shuffled off Johnny’s lap to the seat next to him on the couch, leaning over to place a kiss against warm stomach muscles, then shifting to plant a kiss on Johnny’s lips.

 

They spent several more minutes exchanging plans and kisses, until Johnny sheepishly admitted that a permanently ‘on’ middle caused him to tire more easily, at which point Peter pulled him in for a nap before the outside world could intrude again. Johnny was just about out, and he wasn’t too far behind himself after this emotional rollercoaster of a day, when something occurred to him. “How are you going to get them out?”

 

Johnny groaned plaintively at that, blindly groped for the nearest soft thing – a small throw blanket – and shoved it at his face to try and either shut him up or smother him.

 

Either or, really.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I decided to go ahead and just continue this, since I like it so much. Hope you all enjoy!

Their little bubble of peace and new beginnings had to burst eventually.

 

The world returned with a bright light and artificial camera noises. Peter scrunched his eyes shut and tried to will the picture – that had apparently just been taken - out of existence. It could happen. Maybe.

 

Johnny shifted, possibly peeking at their assailant, before groaning and burrowing back into Peter’s neck. “Go away, Sue. ‘M tired.”

 

“You’ve napped plenty, now you’re just being lazy,” she replied, voice _way_ more pleased than embarrassing photos warranted, in Peter’s opinion. “Reed’s been trying to get in contact with the Cepheans to discuss things – it would help to have you there. Knowing him, he’ll also probably want to run a few more tests after that.”

 

“That was fast,” Peter observed, still refusing to open his eyes even if his brain was fully awake now and trying to consider the logistics of interstellar real-time conversations.

 

“He’s been working on it since we diagnosed Johnny, and you’ve been asleep probably longer than you realize,” Sue teased lightly. Johnny swiped an arm out in her general direction, and would have rolled clean off the couch if not for Peter’s arms around his waist. He tightened them, reflexively.

 

“What time is it, anyway?” he asked, reluctantly loosening his hold so Johnny could drag himself upright, scrubbing his hands over his face, then back into his hair.

 

“Almost six o’clock,” Sue told him, gently pulling Johnny up to his feet, and nudging him toward the door. “I’m on my way to do something about dinner; you’re welcome to stay as usual, Peter.”

 

He thought about it for a moment, debating the pros of listening in on the chat with the Cepheans, versus the perpetual itch under his skin that tended to flare up whenever he thought about all the crime that could be happening while he sat idly by.

 

“All right, but I can’t stay long,” he eventually conceded, dragging himself upright and opening his eyes, just in time to see the elevator closing on a sleep rumpled Johnny.

 

His fingers twitched against the pants of his costume. The soft rasp of fabric on fabric suddenly seemed thunderous in his ears.

 

“You’re drooling,” Sue called out from the doorway leading to the kitchen.

 

“Am not,” he shot back immediately, then surreptitiously tried to swipe his glove under his mouth. Just his luck, there was a tell-tale darker red spot on the glove when he glanced at it afterward.

 

“If you say so,” Sue said doubtfully, grin widening the more he tried to pretend it hadn’t happened. She curled a finger at him beckoningly, then turned for the kitchen. “Would you like cheese on your sandwiches?”

 

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, and hesitated only a minute before following her to the kitchen to help, because trying to make enough sandwiches to feed all of them plus his black hole of a stomach amounted to nothing less than An Ordeal. She put him to work applying condiments and stacking ingredients, after he mangled a tomato more than sliced it. He paused with a knife halfway in the jar of fancy-schmancy mustard that, apparently, Reed loved and Sue hated the sight of, then mentally shrugged and decided to take the opportunity for more information. “So… How long have you guys known about the whole egg thing?”

 

“Not long,” Sue replied, pulling leaves of lettuce away from the head with small, efficient snaps. Upon finishing, and moving on to rescue the remaining tomatoes, she elaborated. “Johnny had been acting a little strangely since we got back from space, but none of us really thought anything of it until that high-rise fire a week and a half ago.”

 

Peter nodded along, vaguely remembering the event he’d heard about later, grabbing some of the cut tomatoes to start adding them to the sandwiches they were intended for. “Johnny helped absorb the flames, right?” A recently-placed tomato stuck to his finger as a thought suddenly occurred to him. “Wait, that would mean he’d have to go nova –“ and his flames always went out for a while after going nova, but the eggs needed the fire –

 

Sue nodded, frowning at the slices of turkey in her hands. “Johnny was… not good, for a while. Luckily, the eggs absorbed enough energy from the nova to stay warm while he recovered and we worked to try and figure out what’d happened. Ben was the one that noticed the glowing first.” She reached over his arm to start placing the meat on its designated sandwiches while he tugged the tomato free. “It took us longer than Reed will ever admit to figure out what they were, and how things had happened.”

 

“Right,” he nodded, stepping aside to start placing the top slices of bread on their finished sandwiches.

 

“Johnny wanted to tell you immediately,” Sue continued, letting out an exasperated but fond huff, but her expression turned serious again quickly. “But he’s never had children before, for all that I know he wants them. I convinced him to wait,” she glanced at him guiltily, then turned back to her work. “At least until we could verify that the eggs weren’t sterile or empty. I’m sorry.”

 

Peter shook his head, loading the plated sandwiches on a tray to bring to the lab while Sue cut several diagonally. “I can understand why you did it, but it still kinda stings that I’m only hearing about it now.” He braced his hands against the counter, and let his head hang for a moment. “You know what I think about family.”

 

Sue nodded, and even though he couldn’t see it, he could hear the swish of her hair moving. “There’s nothing better,” she agreed after a moment of silence, and there was a light touch against his shoulder blade. “But… you’ve never had children, either. So I have to ask: do you feel ready to be a father?”

 

Peter took a moment to _really_ think about that. Even if he felt nothing for Johnny, he would’ve wanted to be part of the children’s lives, but to actually be responsible for a tiny, new person, much less several of them? “I can’t really say that I’d been planning on it happening any time soon, but… Yeah; I’ve always wanted to get married and have kids.”

 

Sue practically cooed at him, then stepped back to put the cut sandwiches on the tray. “Marriage, huh? I know the two of you haven’t been dating, but –”

 

“It’s weird,” Peter interrupted her before should try to ask what they both knew she was going to ask and invariably make one, or both, of them sad. “Johnny’s been my best friend for years, and I love him. I just… hadn’t considered _how_ I love him until Cephei XII. It feels like it should be weird – we’ve never been on an actual date or anything – but… it doesn’t. It feels normal, for us.”

 

“So you _are_ planning on ‘making an honest man out of him’?” Sue couldn’t disguise the smile in her voice or the pleased tone to her voice again. Blushing, Peter straightened away from the counter and scratched his head.

 

“I, uh, haven’t exactly discussed that with Johnny, yet, and I don’t want to pressure him, but…” He slid his hand down to cover his eyes, suddenly feeling shy. “Yeah? I mean… I’d like to, anyway, at some point.”

 

“Well, let me know when you plan on asking him, so I can get pictures, then,” she replied, hefting up the tray of sandwiches while he absently tugged his gloves back on, before passing it into his hands with a firm nudge. “Now put that spider strength to use and let’s go.”

 

“Bossy, much?” He griped good-naturedly, obediently grabbing the tray from her and following her out to the living room. Only then did he spy his mask, abandoned on a side table near the window. “Oh, hey, my mask –“

 

“I’ll get it,” Sue answered, veering off-course to snatch up the red fabric just above the eyes, then rejoined him at the elevator. She tugged it over his head while getting stuck on his ears only once, and straightened it for them while they waited for the elevator to reach them.

 

A thought occurred to Peter like a lightbulb going off synchronized to the faint ‘ding’ of the elevator. “Oh, hey.”

 

“Hm?” Sue made an inquiring noise, pressing the floor number for the lab they wanted.

 

“When should I be expecting the ‘shovel talk’?”

 

“The what?” she asked as the elevator doors closed, and they began to move.

 

“I just admitted to wanting to marry your baby brother. I figure you’ve got some sort of ‘hurt him and I’ll bury your body where no one will find it’ speech planned out somewhere for times like this.”

 

“Oh. No; I wasn’t planning on anything like that.” Sue shrugged. “Sometimes we hurt the ones we love, though I don’t think you – _or_ he – will do it intentionally. Besides, threats aren’t exactly a good way to talk to your ‘at some point’ future in-law, are they?”

 

Peter sighed with relief exaggeratedly, slumping over the tray a little. “That’s a relief.”

 

“And if it _really_ came down to it,” Sue said as the elevator gradually slowed to a stop. “Johnny would burn you to a crisp on his own.”

 

“… That’s fair,” Peter choked out as the doors opened, and Sue preceded him out.

 

“Though I _might_ help him out, depending,” She threw over his shoulder as he stumbled after her.

 

Johnny and Ben looked over as they approached; Reed, as per usual, was so far oblivious to their arrival.

 

“Help who with what?” Johnny asked, head cocked to one side and frowning a little in confusion.

 

“Oh, nothing,” Sue said, sing-song, ruffling his hair as she walked by, and kissed Reed on the cheek. She turned back to the others as Reed snapped his head up, blinking around owlishly. “Come on, boys; let’s eat.”

 

Peter set the tray down, then sidled over to Johnny as the rest walked over. “Hey.”

 

“Hey,” Johnny replied, shaking off his confusion to smile back. “I was wondering where you were.”

 

“You know me, Sandwich Assistant Extraordinaire,” he quipped, wrapping an arm around Johnny’s shoulder and leaning into him while Johnny grabbed up sandwiches for both of them. “Your sister’s scary.”

 

“You’re just _now_ figuring that out?” Johnny asked, amused, biting first into his own sandwich before bumping Peter’s against his mouth through the mask.

 

“Well, before, I hadn’t knocked up her baby brother,” he retorted, then playfully tipped his face away from the invading sandwich.

 

“You kids gonna be like this all the time?” Ben grumbled, dodging around the two of them and the flailing sandwich with the tray balanced in one hand.

 

“Probably,” Peter confirmed, voice muffled by his mask and the sandwich currently pressed against it.

 

“As often as we can get away with it,” Johnny agreed, finally giving in and shoving Peter’s mask up to get the sandwich at his mouth.

 

“–don’t kiss me with mustard breath, please, dear,” Sue mumbled in the background, then spied Ben’s attempted retreat and asked, faux sweetly, “Are you taking that somewhere in particular, Ben?”

 

“Busted,” Johnny snickered, while Peter nodded along, mouth full.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've more or less figured out all the science about Johnny and the eggs, so I’m going to start this by asking for people’s input. Over on my Tumblr, I’ve opened my asks for people to submit possible baby names! You can send me as many as you want, with or without your reasons behind them. I’ll pick the ones I like best, and once they’re picked, I’ll close the asks again. So go ahead and send me those names - Ask URL is https://poplarpando.tumblr.com/ask

Later, as Peter was grabbing his third sandwich, one of Reed’s machines beeped.

 

“That should be the Cepheans,” Reed said, stretching out with one hand to finalize the connection, while trying to make sure he looked presentable. The baseline hum within the lab spooled up by rapid degrees until it passed out of the range of human – even enhanced human – hearing, as the QE communication system kicked in.

 

There weren’t many other options for meaningful communication speeds without quantum entanglement in this instance, Peter knew; RW Cephei was something like 11,416 light years away. Short of going there in person to talk about it, this was their only option.

 

Quantum physics; it made his brain cry a little, on the inside, every time it came up.

 

As the entangled particles of the comm resolved into a screen, Peter hastily shoved the last of his sandwich in his mouth, dusted his face for crumbs, and settled his mask in place. Beside him, Johnny took a reluctant bite bite out of his first sandwich, still only half eaten. Before he could ask about it, though, the comm screen came to life, two Cepheans dominating the view.

 

The first time Peter had seen one of the Cepheans, he couldn’t help but think about mythological salamanders, even if they were closer to reptilian than amphibian in appearance. The two on the screen were of similar build to each other, though the one to their left was slightly larger. Their scales showed variegated, irregular stripes of sand tones, rust, and ash white. The air around both rippled with heat, but the occasional wisp of flame broke out across the shoulders of the Cephean on the right. Both of them were turned to the side so the large, golden-orange eyes on the sides of their heads could better see them on their own QE screen.

 

“Twilight warm you, rishaR’dsRee,” the one on the left greeted them.

 

“Embers spark behind you, zaX’roLeen,” Reed replied, and Peter caught himself squinting behind his mask, trying to pick out a pattern in their scale markings that let Reed know this was the same Cephean that spoke with them before. “Have you reviewed the information I sent you?”

 

zaX’roLeen nodded, an incongruously human gesture that they probably picked up from one of their group when they were working on the shield. “Yes; the news warms gold of the sparking of Lightdrinker stoR’mjaNee’s clutch. Is it her first?”

Johnny spluttered next to him and Ben started chuckling, while it occurred to Peter that the Cepheans might have just as much trouble differentiating characteristics among humans as he did for them.

 

“Ah, no – I mean, yes, but no –” Reed floundered briefly, fingers tying into knots behind his back for a moment. “What I mean is that yes, it _is_ his first, um, ‘clutch’, but Johnny is a male of our species.”

 

The two Cepheans looked at first Reed, then the rest of the group, before settling on Johnny. “… Is not stoR’mjaNee a Lightdrinker? But the Hearthfire within reached for Noonlight in, ah, the small one…” The other Cephean spoke for the first time while zaX’roLeen double-checked their universal translator for errors.

 

“Could you explain to us what you mean by ‘Hearthfire’?” Sue spoke up on Reed’s far side.

 

“The fire of home, of life,” zaX’roLeen explained, gesturing with clawed hands toward their own stomach, then mimed something flowing away from them, and pulling back inward at something invisible. “When the home fades to red empty, it grows out, seeking the gift of a spark.” zaX’roLeen slumps with remembered sorrow. “The memory fades red of stoR’mjaNee’s Hearthfire, growing out so large to consume her – ah, him.”

 

“What you’re saying,” Reed ventured, tentative and thoughtful. “Is that, among your kind, those that can control heat are Lightdrinkers, and Lightdrinkers are the ones to bear offspring?”

 

“Not quite red fades; all born under the Noonlight burn with the Cycle, but the Lightdrinkers burn with the Hearthfire,” zaX’roLeen explained, gesturing to the fire dancing across the other Cephean’s shoulders demonstratively.

 

“So they think Johnny’s a, uh, ‘Lightdrinker’ because he can Flame On?” Peter thought out loud, and Johnny sat down. At first, Peter was concerned, until he saw the – admittedly shaky – grin he threw toward his sister.

 

“Guess that means you’re a dude, Sue,” he whisper-shouted over to her, despite the comm system picking up his comment perfectly fine, and Sue rolled her eyes.

 

“Does the thought fade red untrue?” the other Cephean asked.

 

Reed shook his head, “No; Johnny’s flames, ah, burn with a different Cycle. His body is not prepared to be a ‘Lightdrinker’. That’s part of the reason we wished to speak with you, to prepare ourselves for the danger that the ‘clutch’ might cause.”

 

The two Cepheans trilled in distress for a moment, and the flames over the smaller Cephean snuffed out. “Fades red fades **_black_** our apologies, stoR’mjaNee; we did not wish to fade red cause harm. We warmed gold to help our friends, to fill warm gold sparks in the fade red empty Hearthfire,” zaX’roLeen replied mournfully. They looked to Johnny again. “Black remorse, stoR’mjaNee.”

 

“Nah, don’t worry, it’s warm gold,” Johnny said after a moment, standing up again a little unsteadily. Peter tucked a hand into the small of his back to help steady him, concern growing. “I’m, uh, warm gold happy for the clutch; I just don’t know what to expect. For starters… how long will it take before they’re, uh, ready to come out?” He raised a hand to his stomach, and the two Cepheans cooed at the sight.

 

“The Hearthfire burns warm gold strong in you stoR’mjaNee,” zaX’roLeen murmured approvingly. “Your Sparklight warmed gold strong for you.” Here, they glanced appraisingly at the others present. “You chose warm gold well. We can send our healers’ guidance, if that warms gold good for you and the sparks?”

 

Reed took over again at that point, going so far as to step forward and nod so the attention would return to him. “That would help us very much, zaX’roLeen. Thank you.”

 

“The heartspark fades red at the misunderstanding, rishaR’dsRee. We will gather the guidance, and send it to you warm gold in one cycle of Noonlight,” zaX’roLeen replied, nodding again. Then, they turned to Johnny again. “May none of your sparks fade out, stoR’mjaNee.”

 

Johnny paled a little, leaning into Peter’s hand on his back suddenly. “Yeah… Thanks.”

 

With one last nod, the QE communication shut off.

 

“You okay, kid?” Ben rumbled from where he had situated himself to one side; apparently, he’d noticed Johnny’s unsteadiness, too.

 

“Yeah,” he reassured quickly, straightening up as if that would demonstrate how ‘okay’ he was; he was still a bit pale, though, which ruined the effect. “I’m fine.”

 

“And I’m the Queen of England,” Ben said, doubtfully. Johnny slumped a little as Sue and Reed started looking at him critically, and Peter started rubbing his back.

 

“… I’m just a little queasy,” Johnny eventually admitted.

 

“That’s understandable; your body’s not accustomed to housing such a large mass in your stomach for so long,” Reed thought out loud, stretching to turn on a series of full-body scanning equipment with one hand, while the other took his still-only-half-eaten sandwich from him. “How much have you managed to eat, today?”

 

“I had a protein bar, earlier,” Johnny said after a thoughtful moment. Peter curled his arm around him, leading him over to the scanners while waiting for the rest of the list, that didn’t seem to be coming any time soon.

 

“Anything else?” Reed prompted after Johnny was lying down on the bed of the scanner, adjusting a dial and keying in a string of commands. Almost immediately, a thermal scan popped up on one of the screens, Johnny’s stomach glowing like a star against the relatively cool backdrop of the rest of the room.

 

Johnny thought for a bit then shrugged, his thermal double shrugging in tandem. “Think I might’ve had a few peanut M&Ms this morning?”

 

“Hey,” Ben protested half-heartedly, and Peter assumed the candy was his originally.

 

Reed frowned, either at what Johnny said, or the new information that had popped up on other screens, each detailing some aspect of Johnny’s vitals, each fading into a sort of nebulous gray area where Johnny’s body transformed into energetic plasma.

 

“Johnny, you need to eat more than that, especially if you’re burning non-stop,” Sue scolded, worried now.

 

“I can’t,” Johnny protested, weakly; he knew that wasn’t enough just as much as the rest of them. “I’m not hungry. It’s like being stuffed, _Thanksgiving Day_ stuffed, all the time. There’s no room left.”

 

“Eat as much as you can, when you can. High calorie foods,” Reed urged distractedly, pulling up a detailed overview of vitamin and mineral balances. “We’ll need to supplement intravenously – oh.”

 

“’Oh’? What ‘oh’?” Peter asked, heart suddenly in his throat. He walked over to get a better look at the readouts. “Is that –?”

 

“Low Vitamin K, high Vitamin D,” Reed nodded, turning to stretch to another machine to begin synthesizing supplemental fluids for Johnny.

 

“What’s that mean?” Johnny asked, trying to sit up until Ben walked over to place a rocky hand against his chest, gently pushing him back down.

 

“It could lead to gradual calcification of the soft tissues,” Reed responded, distractedly.

 

“Calcification? Like rocks?” Johnny asked, thunking his head down against the table before looking up at Ben meaningfully. “I’m too pretty to turn into a living statue.”

 

“Shaddup,” Ben grumbled, as Sue joined Peter in looking at the screen, leaning over Reed’s stretched out waist.

 

“Relax, Johnny,” Sue said after a moment. “It would take a long time to get to advanced levels of calcification. Besides, I don’t see any abnormal calcium salt deposits, here. Just normal bones.”

 

Peter looked over at her, then at the screen; if it wasn’t visible on the screen, the only place the calcium could be going was – “Oh! Hey, you said the calcium salts are used for bone? What about, you know, shell?”

 

“Shell?” Ben echoed, as a lightbulb seemed to be going off for Sue. Peter nodded toward Johnny’s stomach.

 

“You know… egg shells.”

 

“That’s a good point, Peter,” Sue nodded, then stepped back as Reed’s body contracted back into shape, holding a bag of cloudy, slightly off-color fluids. He stepped back and around them to Johnny’s side, carefully setting up the IV drip and squeezing Johnny’s shoulder, before returning to the diagnostic screens.

 

“While that works its way into your system, there are a few tests I’d like to run…”

 

Peter shuffled back to Johnny’s side as Reed’s explanations of his work gradually devolved into incoherent mumbling. Conflicted, he hooked the bottom of his mask up, then leaned over to press a kiss into his forehead. “Hey.”

 

“Hey,” Johnny answered back, smiling at him, even though he didn’t feel well. Peter’s heart, having almost found its way out of his throat when the apparent danger of Johnny’s organs turning into rocks had passed for the moment, burrowed its way back up at that smile, feeling guilty that Johnny was like this because of him. He scrounged up a smile back for him, though; his color was already looking a little better with the inflow of fluids, though that could be his imagination.

 

“I’d love to stick around more and watch Reed stick you full of pins and probes, but –”

 

“The streets are calling to you; I know,” Johnny finished for him, looking a little wistful. “Wish I could go with you, but superheroing’s a big no-no until there’s vacancies again at Chez Johnny.”

 

Peter nodded, relieved that Johnny would be avoiding conflict until the eggs were laid or hatched or whatever, and even _more_ relieved that he didn’t have to be the one to convince him of this. “Probably the only time fighting on an empty stomach is a good idea,” he agreed.

 

Johnny reached up out of the machine despite vague protesting from Reed, curling his hand into the fabric of Peter’s suit and tugging him down. “Now give me a proper kiss before you go.”

 

Peter cradled his face between his hands, and did just that.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder: I'm eagerly accepting baby name suggestions over on my Tumblr Anonymous asking should on, in case you don't have a Tumblr etc. (If you want to send them to me on here, I'll also accept them.) This one's a little late because I was visiting my mother for Mother's Day.
> 
> Link to Tumblr for baby name asks: https://poplarpando.tumblr.com/ask

He made it about halfway through his usual patrol route when the doubts started to rear their heads.

 

While webbing a pair of muggers to a streetlight for the authorities find, one of them – the other was unconscious after failing spectacularly at tackling him into a brick wall – tried to ask for leniency, on account of having a kid at home waiting for them.

 

“You shoulda thought of that _before_ you decided to hurt people for their money,” he teased lightly, then webbed over his mouth a bit more forcefully than usual. He jumped to hang from the arm of the light above them, forcing lightness into his parting quip. “Next time I’d suggest honest labor instead, like crab fishing, or miming!” That said, he tossed out a line of webbing at a far building, and swung up away from the street.

 

He didn’t realize how worked up he was until he stopped briefly on the corner overhand of a rooftop to decide on a new path, and cracked part of it under his hands.

 

He couldn’t seem to stop thinking now, about parents, and the various ways they can endanger their children. Round and round his thoughts chased each other, on all the ways the children could be hurt and it’d be _all his fault_ , and it was ridiculous, he knew that, but the thoughts still wouldn’t leave him alone and he wanted to scream and hide and punch something and never let them go and –

 

Shaking slightly, he stepped away from the ledge, pulling out his phone from the little hidden pocket in his costume. He sat down in the gap between a service shed and an air conditioning unit, dialing a number he knew by heart, inwardly cringing because it was already late, _really_ late, and he was being annoying but he just… really needed to do this.

 

He clutched at the mask with his free hand, the other holding the phone up near his ear, trying to distract himself from all the thoughts of how this could go horribly, _familiarly_ _wrong_ by forcing his breaths to remain somewhat-even, in time with the ringing over the phone.

 

His breath stuttered when the other line picked up, and a familiar voice mumbled, “Hello?”

 

“Hey, MJ,” Peter eventually croaked out. “You got a minute?”

 

She must have picked up on his distress – what _ever_ could have given it away, the midnight calling, his complete inability to control his own voice, or – because her next words very so very gentle. “For you, Tiger, I’ve got twenty.”

 

He barked out a short laugh, despite himself. “Only twenty?”

 

“Mhm,” She hummed, and he could hear her shifting position over the line, probably to get comfortable for a long talk. “After that, we’ll have to re-negotiate.”

 

“Fair enough,” he answered, and it was a little easier, this time, a little closer to calm just from the banter alone. “I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer.” That hit maybe a bit too close to home for this early in the call, but that’s him for you.

 

“I’ll be the judge of that,” she sniffed, and then let her tone soften again. “Now, tell me what’s wrong so we can either fix it, or hit it until it goes away.”

 

“So violent,” he teased half-heartedly, then gave in. “Do you remember when I went off-planet with the FF, a little over a month ago? Well…”

 

* * *

 

It was getting pretty early by the time MJ had finished talking him down from the metaphorical, if not literal, ledge, so he reluctantly decided to cut his losses and swing toward home… by way of the Baxter Building.

 

Carefully, he crawled over the windows to Johnny’s room, guessing correctly that he would have moved there at some point in the night. He didn’t knock, or try to make his way in – that suddenly felt a bit presumptuous, considering the two of them hadn’t had any official dates yet, or anything – instead, he just peeked in, needing to double-check that Johnny was fine before he could sleep himself.

 

Apparently, Johnny slept naked.

 

Maybe he did it because of his powers, or vanity, or even sensitive skin, only Johnny could say; whatever the reason, his body was almost fully exposed, stretched out over a soft-looking fitted sheet, top sheet kicked down and tangled around his feet. One of his hands was draped over his stomach, warm light escaping between spread fingers in diffuse bars; an IV line trailed from the back of this hand toward a stand – probably with a new bag of nutrients – serving as the only evidence beside the light that something had changed. Johnny’s other hand was tucked up under his pillow, propping his head up slightly. The angle allowed Peter to see Johnny’s face, smooth and soft, gorgeous as usual, even in sleep.

 

He tore his gaze away before his peeping slipped any further on the ‘creepy’ scale, and swung away. He knew what mental image he’d be falling asleep to, tonight. Or morning, rather.

 

* * *

 

Johnny texted him a series of increasingly-improbable cat videos the next morning – to which he replied with videos of Pokémon doing silly dances, as you do – until it dawned on him that Johnny probably had time to kill, while everyone else ate breakfast and he, well, probably didn’t. With that in mind, he gathered up as many ridiculous online quizzes as he could find, and proceeded to gently flood his inbox during spare moments, until lunchtime.

 

He made one quick stop out of costume, then webbed his way over, glancing in windows until he spotted Ben settled into a chair massive enough to fit his frame, watching something on television. Peter waited until Ben looked impatient – gotta love commercial breaks – then knocked against the window. He waited until the large man looked over to hold up his prize and tilt his head curiously. Ben blinked, then nodded with understanding, and briefly pantomimed holding a steering wheel. Peter threw him a salute, then crawled along the building until he reached Johnny’s ‘garage’.

 

He found Johnny waist-deep in something low, sleek, and iridescent blue like a beetle, arm twisting rhythmically either to tighten or loosen something, Peter couldn’t tell. He knocked against the window, and Johnny looked up. Peter waved, because he’s hopeless.

 

Johnny straightened up, exchanging his tools for a cloth to wipe his hands on as he walked over. He looked from the window latch to his still slightly greasy hands – that stuff got _everywhere_ – then awkwardly released the latch with his elbow. Peter didn’t have the heart to tell him there was a little grease there, too.

 

Seriously, that stuff gets _everywhere_.

 

With the latch released, Peter slid the window open himself. “Hey, Johnny.”

 

“Hey, Pete,” Johnny replied, stepping back so Peter could climb through the window. “What brings you out this way today?”

 

“Oh, no reason at all,” he answered innocently, holding his prize – a bakery bag – up demonstratively. “Just thought I’d drop by with lunch.”

 

Johnny seemed to deflate a little, turning for the sink. “Let me go wash up –”

 

“Ah ah,” Peter snagged an arm around his waist and tugged him back. “Who said this was for you?” Johnny spluttered for a second, holding his hands up to keep either of them from getting greasy, which gave Peter enough time to tug his mask up, then steal a kiss.

 

Johnny absently licked his lips when Peter backed off, which just made him want to steal another kiss. “You taste like sugar; were they handing out free samples, or something?”

 

“There may have been a complimentary donut hole that didn’t survive the trip here,” he admitted, finally letting Johnny go wash his hands with degreasing soap while he unpacked the bag onto a side table. He pulled out a sandwich for himself – he wasn’t kidding about that, after all – and a small box roughly the size of a baseball. Once that was done, he snuck up behind Johnny, curling his hands around his midsection and hooking his chin over his shoulder. The vaguely-orange smell of the soap Johnny was scrubbing with tickled his nose.

 

“I could get used to this,” Johnny hummed, tipping his head aside invitingly; Peter obligingly trailed kisses over the exposed surface.

 

“Good,” Peter replied once he’d worked his way up to his ear, then gave his earlobe a light nibble because he was determined now for that to happen. He loosened his hold so Johnny could lean forward to rinse off his arms up to his elbows. “How’re you feeling, today?”

 

“I feel good,” he replied, playfully pushing his ass against Peter’s crotch while he rinsed then straightening away to turn the water off. Hands still damp, he turned around to cradle the sides of Peter’s face, kissing him softly. “How about you? How’re you holding up?”

 

“Oh you know me,” Peter said dismissively, walking the two of them back toward the table.

 

“I _do_ know you; that’s why I’m asking,” Johnny shot back, nipping at his lower lip. “No breakdowns? No fleeing the country for my or the babies’ own good?”

 

“No no, nothing like that,” Peter laughed slipping his hands down from Johnny’s waist to his hips, before stalling for a moment. “… Okay, so there _may_ have been a bit of freaking out in the wee hours of the morning, but I’m better now.” He tugged his mask off so Johnny could see his eyes when he promised. “All finished with the freaking; I’m good, now.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah,” Peter nodded, sneaking in one more kiss before letting Johnny go. “Now it’s time for lunch.”

 

Johnny eyed the sandwich Peter picked up like it might bite him. “Not so sure I’m hungry, Pete. Reed’s figured out a schedule of IVs, anyway.”

 

Peter nodded to the small box. “Try a taste while it’s still warm, at least,” he urged. “If it’s too much, you can save the rest for later.”

 

Johnny dragged over a pair of low mechanic’s stools for the two of them, then sat down, eyeing the box. Reluctantly, he lifted the lid, and then smiled almost shyly. “Pete…”

 

It was one of those roses made from apple slices that’d become popular lately, dusted with a little bit of cinnamon sugar. Peter ducked his head and took a giant bite of his sandwich to avoid answering questions, then started talking anyway. “I was trying to think of something small, ‘cause I know you’re not hungry.” He swallowed after a cursory chew, wincing as the bread and fillings scraped his throat on the way down. “This way, you can eat a slice at a time, if you need to.”

 

Johnny raised an eyebrow at him, and the lack of justification for it being shaped like a flower, versus simpler – and less expensive – apple chips. “Uh huh.”

 

Peter took another hurried bite of his sandwich.

 

After a moment, Johnny peeled off part of the outermost part of the flower, pausing right before placing it in his mouth. “He loves me, he loves me not…” he murmured, singsong.

 

Peter coughed.

 

Johnny popped the apple slices in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully, then swallowed. “I’m thinking the first one.”

 

Johnny tasted like cinnamon and apple when Peter kissed him later.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick reminder that I'll be accepting suggested baby names on my Tumblr (or here) until the babies hatch; I'll try to give advance warning of this, so you're aware. Tumblr link for suggestions is: https://poplarpando.tumblr.com/ask
> 
> Note: There's some blood in this chapter, so be mindful if that's a thing for you.

“Reed got the info from the Cepheans a little while ago,” Johnny told him later, after they’d eaten lunch and made out like teenagers for a while. “Said he was going to call you once he had all the info organized and converted their measurement systems over and stuff. I stopped listening after a while.”

 

Peter snorted, carefully detangling himself from Johnny, looking around for his mask. “I’ll await his call with baited breath, then,” he said, faux-breathlessly, snatching up his mask from where it hung onto the car’s passenger side mirror. _How_ it got there, he had no idea.

 

“You heading out?” Johnny asked, stretching out over the backseat of the car because backseat make outs were _classic_ , thank you.

 

“Yeah, I’ve gotta get back,” he replied, offering a hand, which Johnny used to pull himself up. He stroked his hands over Johnny’s ribs, ‘helping’ him straighten his shirt out, and Johnny batted his hands away, ticklish.

 

“All right; be careful,” he said, actually fixing his shirt. Peter smacked a kiss against his cheek, loudly, and Johnny shooed him toward the window, laughing. Pleased with himself for getting Johnny to laugh, he tugged his mask in place firmly, and crawled out the window. He waited to one side of the window while Johnny walked over to shut it behind him, then poked his head back in at the last minute. “So I have a question for you.”

 

Johnny playfully pushed against his forehead, but Peter wouldn’t budge. “Yeah? What’s that?”

 

“Do you have any plans… say, Wednesday afternoon?”

 

“I’ve got a shoot around 1, but after that I’m free,” he replied, blue eyes narrowing suspiciously. “Why?”

 

“We should go out. Like, on a date,” Peter told the window, unable to meet Johnny’s eyes in that moment. “We haven’t really don’t that.”

 

“Dude, we _just_ had lunch together,” Johnny pointed out, which was unfairly reasonable of him.

 

“Well, yeah, but,” Peter stalled for a bit, trying to think of why this didn’t count as an ‘actual date’. “We didn’t even leave your house, technically.”

 

“A lot of dates happen at someone’s house, or did you never stay in and watch movies and stuff with any dates before?”

 

“Well, yeah, but… But that was just staying in?” Peter shrugged helplessly.

 

“You’re hopeless,” Johnny huffed, smiling anyway. “But sure; I’ll go on _another_ date with you on Wednesday. Are we meeting up somewhere, or…?”

 

Now suddenly on the spot for the specifics of the date he hadn’t planned yet, he looked past Johnny at the car still waiting to be worked on. Hmm.

 

“I’ll swing by here once I’m free,” he said after a moment, the beginnings of a plan starting to form. “You have a car that can run right now?”

 

“Yeah, I’ve got one,” Johnny answered, folding his arms over his chest and eyeing Peter distrustfully. “But _you_ aren’t driving it.”

 

Peter clutched at his chest with both hands. “You wound me!” He tipped himself backward, still holding the glass with his feet, but Johnny leaned out the window to fist a hand in his costume and pull him back in. “My good name, _blackened_ by my sweetheart!”

 

“I’ll blacken _you_ ,” Johnny muttered but looked away, blushing slightly. Peter reached out to trace the edge of one pinked ear, and Johnny shivered. “I – Right, um. I guess I can get a car ready.”

 

“And I’ll get everything else,” Peter promised, feeling steadily surer of his plan. “But now I really gotta go.”

 

“Yeah, yeah; go be everyone’s knight in shining khaki,” Johnny waved him away as he shot out a webline to the nearest likely building, sliding the window shut as he swung away.

 

* * *

 

Between reviewing the Cepheans’ medical data, Reed’s notes, fighting crime, and holding a day job, Peter was fairly busy for the rest of the day and most of the next, which happened to be Tuesday. Really, the only times he surfaced from protein matrices, calcium salts, adenine ribo-heptaphosphene conversion rates, photo- and **_thermo_** synthetic yolk sacs, and tentative incubation periods was to eat, sleep, punch bad guys, and text Johnny.

 

Okay, not really; he texted a few other people, too, like MJ who, now that she knew about his impending fatherhood, felt the need to both pester him for updates and tease him for going ‘from single to baby daddy to a half dozen celebrities-to-be’. She was the _worst_.

 

And by worst, he meant the best, really.

 

Part of the text chain between Peter and Johnny involved Peter distracting Johnny when he felt queasy, but at other times it was more benign. He summarized any medical information he thought might be important for Johnny to know – mostly just replacing the more complicated albeit more precise scientific terms with clearer language – which Johnny made sure to complain about before asking about another aspect of the process. Johnny sent him a series of shirtless selfies, pouting faux-sensually at the camera while fondling one of his IV bags. Peter sent him a GIF of a panting cartoon dog. Johnny sent a text comprised entirely of emojis.  Normal stuff, really, if not for the alien egg babies and undercurrent of sexual tension between them.

 

… The babies were new, at least, anyway.

 

He had maybe an hour to plan for their date before patrolling Tuesday night, and fell into bed right after, so he was a bit distracted trying to finish preparations Wednesday morning when he noticed he had several texts from Sue.

 

_‘Everything’s fine now, don’t panic. I’ll make sure he calls you when he wakes up again’_

Panicking, Peter scrolled up for her previous messages.

 

_‘Still no change, Reed’s going to try forcing it to stop.’_

 

_‘Did Johnny mention anything to you, to give us an idea when it started?’_

_‘Johnny may have fainted from low blood pressure; the towel he had wrapped around was completely soaked.’_

_“We found Johnny. He lost consciousness in the bath. There’s blood everywhere.’_

_‘I know you’re probably out working, but have you heard from Johnny lately? I know his appetite is more or less gone, but he usually joins us for dinner still.’_

Peter nearly broke his phone, stabbing the numbers for Johnny’s cell.

 

Sue picked up, instead. “Peter?”

 

“Sue? What happened? Is Johnny okay? I didn’t see your texts before; I crashed after patrol last night and –”

 

“Breathe, Peter,” Sue chided him calmly, so Peter gulped down air for a moment. Sue wouldn’t be calm if Johnny wasn’t okay, so he had to be okay. Right? “I’m sorry for worrying you. Johnny’s fine; he just had a little mishap last night.”

 

“What happened?” Peter asked again, already trying to gather the pieces of his costume so he could swing over and check for himself. He’d be late, but that wasn’t anything new, for him. “You mentioned something about blood in your texts.”

 

“As we understand it,” Sue began, drawing in a fortifying breath. “Johnny scratched himself while working under one of the cars in the garage. It wasn’t a deep scratch, so he wrapped one of the clean shop towels around it and went to get cleaned up. We now think he fell asleep in the bath, but with his Vitamin K levels still low, the scratch didn’t clot and just kept… oozing blood into the bath, possibly for hours.”

 

Peter stilled at the mental image _that_ brought up: Johnny, head tipped back over the lip of the tub, still and pale in a tub of blood. He shuddered. “Who, ah… who found him?”

 

“Ben did,” Sue said, voice suddenly hushed; there was the sound of rustling, possibly Sue leaving whatever room she’d been in, before she continued, voice still low. “He said he had a bad feeling when Johnny didn’t show up for dinner; later, he came charging out of Johnny’s room holding a mess of bloody towels. It was Johnny.”

 

Peter cursed quietly. “I’m on my way over.”

 

“There’s no need, Peter,” Sue said, clearly resigned to her words being ignored. “He’s fine now; he just needs to rest.”

 

“He mentioned having a photoshoot today, is he still going to go?” Peter asked, balancing the phone between his ear and shoulder while he tugged on the pants and boots of his costume.

 

“I believe so,” she said, voice suddenly distant from the phone; she was probably checking his calendar. He took the opportunity to quickly yank the top half of his costume on, resettling the phone as he reached for his webshooters and gloves. “– been planning this spread for a few months, I think; I know he was talking about it before we went into space.”

 

“What’s he modeling, anyway?” he asked, giving his last glove a final tug, then grabbing the phone to pull his mask on one-handed. “He never said.”

 

“Blue jeans,” she told him, a smile audible in her voice. “They say Johnny tells it, he nearly got slapped by a European underwear model over the job, until the man realized who he was; then, he chased him with a fire extinguisher.”

 

Peter laughed despite the vice grip around his heart still. “The world of high fashion is _fierce_ , you know.”

 

“Oh, I know,” Sue agreed sagely while Peter scaled his building one-handed. “Johnny insists it’s worse than most supervillain organizations.”

 

“To be fair, some of those organizations are just _terrible_ ,” Peter pointed out, then shifted position. “I’m going to hang up now so I can head over real quick.”

 

“You don’t need to, but fine,” Peter could almost hear Sue rolling her eyes, but she didn’t argue further; he just, really needed to see Johnny _actually_ being fine for himself. Otherwise, he’d just worry himself sick all day. And maybe punch someone harder than necessary. “I’ll crack his window for you.”

“Thanks, Sue,” he said, then put his phone away before he could hear her acknowledgment, pushing himself to swing to the Baxter Building as fast as he could.

 

He landed adjacent to the open window with an incautious ‘thud’, sending mild vibrations into the window framing, then pushed the window open enough to slip inside. It was Johnny’s room again, with Johnny propped up, pale and unconscious, on a mountain of extra pillows, hooked up to both a blood transfusion _and_ IV nutrients this time. There was an extra blanket tucked over him to roughly chest-height.

 

Peter walked over until he could caress Johnny’s cheek, feeling the slight rasp of light blond stubble even if he couldn’t really see it yet, then gently pressed their foreheads together. He took a moment just to breathe and feel the warm puffs of Johnny’s breath against the mask, before another worry had him reaching for the blanket, and pulling it up just enough to peek under.

 

The glow and warmth from Johnny’s stomach seemed just as strong as two days ago, thank goodness.

 

“Always so dramatic, eh Torch?” Peter joked so he wouldn’t do something embarrassing like start bawling, and Johnny stirred.

 

“’ey Pete,” Johnny mumbled, voice sleep-rough; he cleared his thought a little. “’at’re you doin’ here?”

 

“Oh, you know; just thought I’d drop in for a bit, look at your ugly mug,” Peter tried to joke, but his tone fell a bit flat. “Remind me to tell you a story about a Russian prince, sometime.”

 

Johnny’s blue eyes brimmed with sleepy confusion, but he nodded anyway. “Uh. ‘kay…?”

 

“That’s all, really,” Peter lowered his voice to a whisper, then shifted the mask up enough so he could plant a kiss on Johnny’s forehead. “Go back to bed; you’ve got a big photoshoot later. Blue jeans, right?”

 

Johnny nodded, missing the fact he hadn’t told Peter what the shoot was for. “Make my ass look fantastic,” he mumbled, already starting to droop with sleep again; maybe one of those bags had some sedative in it, or something.

 

“I bet they do,” Peter agreed, even softer, then carefully backed away. “I’ll see you later, Sparky.”

 

“’kay…” Johnny sighed, and Peter let himself out.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter and Johnny’s date was supposed to go in this chapter, but one thing led to another, and Johnny decided to play some video games. Despite whatever appearances might be suggesting, I actually know nothing about cars. Oh! I don’t have a whole lot of plans between the end of The Date and the eggs hatching (I have one, maybe two things planned for that whole time), so if there’s something in particular that you might be wanting to see, drop me an ask over on my Tumblr; it’s still open because of the Baby Names thing, but it can be used for other stuff too. Or leave it in a comment or something, that works too.
> 
> Once again, the link to my Tumblr askbox for requests or baby names or whatever is: https://poplarpando.tumblr.com/ask

The afternoon couldn’t come soon enough for Peter after that.

 

He tried to keep himself on-task, with the vague idea of softening his Egregiously Late arrival into merely a Very Late arrival, but he couldn’t seem to focus. Or rather, he _was_ focused, but not on the _right_ things; only his spider sense had saved him from walking headfirst into a wall on three separate occasions, and he _may_ have been caught staring pensively at a pigeon at one point by a janitor. It only got worse when it occurred to him that Johnny had probably been scratched getting a car ready for their date later.

 

After that whole bleeding scare – and with no help _at all_ from his enhanced senses – everything was a bit… _Much_ , today.

 

Johnny texted him a selfie – well, sort of a selfie, depending on if a picture of him from the waist down and turned away from the camera counted as a selfie – presumably after the shoot was over but before he changed, because Peter was pretty sure he’d have remembered those pants. ‘Painted on’ didn’t even _begin_ to describe it.

 

There was a little caption to go with the picture: _‘Told you.’_

 

Peter texted back a block of nonsense letters, symbols, and numbers, with the occasional heart emoji thrown in for good measure. The day was starting to look up, again.

 

Taking a somewhat roundabout path to the Baxter Building in regular clothes, he did some quick shopping, ‘accidentally’ clotheslined a  would-be purse snatcher with his shoulder bag because irony, and picked himself up a couple of cheap hot dogs. He thought briefly about picking up another little snack for Johnny, but that apple-rose thing, while a fitting gift, wasn’t exactly the sort of gift easily topped, particularly on his budget, not to mention that he didn’t want to push Johnny about eating and end up making him throw up. That would be neither romantic nor sexy, and honestly, Peter was kind of hoping for one or both of those words to pass Johnny’s lips tonight.

 

Realistically, Johnny would probably laugh – which wouldn’t be terrible; Johnny non-literally lit up the room when he laughed – but there was something to be said for impressing your date when trying to woo them.

 

He also had a bit of something to prove, to Johnny and himself. Mostly to Johnny, really.

 

Supplies gathered and stomach fed, Peter found himself somewhere to change into his costume, put his bag inside of a different bag he carried in it to disguise it a little, then continued the rest of his journey to the Baxter Building by air.

 

He found Johnny sitting on a couch intently playing one of those hyper-realistic racing games that were only really fun if you understood and liked real-life racing, his body leaning into the turns as they appeared on screen.

 

Idly, Peter wondered if Johnny had driven the course in real life, and felt maybe a little sheepish when he realized he didn’t know.

 

“Hey, Torch,” he spoke up to let him know he was here, moving to stand and watch over his shoulder. They weren’t in a hurry or anything, so he’d let Johnny finish his race. Video game etiquette, and all that.

 

Johnny glanced back at him only briefly, but he smiled. “Hey, Petey.” He reached back while his car – something expensive-looking and bright orange – barreled down the straight toward the finish line, tugging Peter down so he could kiss his cheek through the mask, mumbling something about luck before turning his attention back to the game. Still had another lap, apparently.

 

“I’m gonna go get changed while you finish up, okay?” He waited until Johnny nodded, then waited some more to watch him almost dance in place leaning into a series of animated hairpin turns, before finally retreating to the restroom to change and futilely try to finger-comb his hair into some semblance of order. Once it looked as good as it was going to get – which was a slightly odd combination of messy and flat from his mask – he took a deep breath, and walked back out. He moved to take a seat next to Johnny, but stopped partway down to pick up the IV bag he hadn’t noticed laying on the couch next to Johnny. “Aren’t these supposed to be held up above your head or something?”

 

Johnny shrugged, pulling a PIT maneuver on another car that he’d never actually dare to do in person. “Nah, it’s cool. It’s pressurized or something; Reed wanted his IVs to still work in space, I guess.”

 

“Won’t it force air bubbles into your blood?” Peter asked and Johnny huffed, but eventually answered as he came back around to the straight; the screen flashed with a notice as Johnny began his final lap.

 

“I’m not gonna get the bends; the bag’s under a vacuum,” Johnny leaned into Peter as he drifted around the first of the hairpin turns again. Peter waited until Johnny leaned away for the next hairpin, then leaned in to kiss Johnny on the cheek for the last one. There was a second, smaller straight right after the turns, so Johnny turned his head long enough to extract a proper kiss from Peter, then turned back for the gradual curve that marked the halfway point in the racetrack.

 

“You ever driven on this one for real?” Peter finally asked, watching Johnny’s car shake particularly hard from driving straight through an area set up as a series of slight curves then immediately bank left, away from Peter.

 

“Nah; this track’s in Buenos Aires, and I usually try to keep to the States in case I need to meet up with the FF quick,” he replied, angling into the last two turns before the straight to the finish.

 

Peter waited until Johnny was passing the finish line before cheering like it was a real race, only quieter because they were indoors. “And the crowd goes wild! Once again, Johnny Storm _smokes_ the competition!” He cupped his hands around his mouth, making little ‘ahh’ sounds to emulate the cheering of a distant crowd.

 

Johnny quickly closed the game down, then shoved a hand in Peter’s face; Peter let himself fall to the far end of the couch, still ‘cheering’. “You’re ridiculous,” Johnny rolled his eyes at Peter, but Peter didn’t miss how he preened under the attention, anyway.

 

“Pot, kettle,” Peter replied, watching as Johnny stood up and he got a good look at the jeans he was wearing. “Are those the pants from your shoot, earlier?”

 

“What, these old things?” Johnny faux-demurred, gaze hot on Peter briefly for paying enough attention to his text earlier to recognize a particular style of blue jeans. “No but seriously; I liked them so much during the shoot that I went and bought a pair, so the advertising ploy worked for one person, at least.”

 

“Two people,” Peter corrected him because _damn_ ; they weren’t his personal style – he did _have_ a personal style, thank you – but he could _definitely_ get used to seeing them on Johnny.

 

This time, Johnny’s ears went a little pink, though he didn’t acknowledge it. “So, Mr. ‘Must-Go-On-A-Quote-Unquote-Real-Date’, where are we going?” He reached a hand down to Peter, who handed up the IV back; Johnny shifted it to his far hand, then reached down again and Peter finally got a clue and let him pull him up.

 

“This time, we’re definitely leaving the building,” Peter ‘agreed’, keeping hold of Johnny’s hand when he went to pull it away, tugging his hand up until he could place a hopefully-romantic kiss on the back of it.

 

Johnny tugged his hand free with a laugh, “Dork.” He then hooked the hand with the IV bag over his shoulder and started toward the elevator for the parking garage. “We’d better get a move on, then, before traffic gets any worse.”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Peter happily followed Johnny into the elevator despite his failed romantic overture – there was seriously something about those jeans, or maybe it was Johnny’s ass – until it occurred to him that he hadn’t noticed the glow of the eggs since he arrived. “You aren’t glowing.”

 

“Huh?” Johnny looked at him in confusion for a moment, then his expression cleared. “Oh, right; yeah, I’ve been working on reabsorbing the energy before it gets close enough to my skin to glow. I didn’t want the makeup artist and photographer and everyone asking questions just yet.”

 

“Isn’t that exhausting?” Peter asked, trying to imagine simultaneously letting off and reabsorbing energy, but he couldn’t. It sounded tiring, though.

 

“Well, it’s not _easy_ ,” Johnny allowed, shrugging his free shoulder. “I figured it’d make things easier, though, especially since I _don’t know where we’re going_ …” He hinted, unsubtly.

 

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Peter assured him, blithely ignoring the hint for now. “We’re not going anywhere public.”

 

“You’re doing this just to spite me, aren’t you,” Johnny muttered, exiting the elevator into the parking garage and gesturing expansively to the various vehicles on their right.

 

“Maybe a little,” Peter quipped, looking over their vehicle options. Motorcycles, convertibles, trucks… it seemed like there was one of every kind of vehicle Peter could think of, over there. Peter wandered over to the truck and looked into the truck bed. Now that he thought of it… “You wouldn’t happen to have some blankets around here, would you?”

 

“Yeah, hang on,” Johnny wandered over to another row of cars, reaching into the back of – was that a Firebird? – and grabbing an armload of surprisingly ratty-looking blankets. He saw Peter’s surprised look on his way back, and hunched his shoulders a little defensively. “What? I use them to protect the cars’ paint jobs for some projects.”

 

“Nothing,” Peter replied quickly, raising his hands up to try and placate Johnny, then opened his big fat mouth again. “I just… didn’t expect them to be so, uh… hole-y, is all.”

 

“Yeah,” Johnny sniffed, anger fizzling out as almost as quickly as it appeared.  “This is where all the nice blankets come to die.”

 

“Right,” Peter nodded, then scurried over to take the blankets from Johnny’s hands. “Go on and hop in.” Peter waited while Johnny walked around to the driver’s side and unlocked the truck, then opened the door and arranged the blankets and his bag in the footwell where he wouldn’t step on them while Johnny climbed in and buckled up, then followed suit. Johnny set the IV bag down on the seat between them, then slid the key into the ignition.

 

“So where to?” He asked again, and Peter suddenly remembered a possible flaw in his planned date, but answered anyway.

 

“Head for Long Island.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gave me a bit of trouble, but it’s finally done! I took a bit of creative liberty with the amount of traffic/people on Long Island - and if I know nothing about cars, I know Less Than Nothing about New York in specific and the eastern U.S. in general - but hopefully everything is still moderately plausible, at least in a world with superheroes regularly wrecking up the place.
> 
> Once again, suggestions for baby names, or scenes you want to see can be either sent via askbox at my Tumblr (link to follow), or in the comments below.
> 
> My Tumblr: https://poplarpando.tumblr.com/ask

Peter was a city boy, at heart.

 

Even the less pleasant sights, sounds, and smells struck him with a sort of exasperated nostalgia that his aunt had laughed at on more than one occasion as he grew up. She used to say he had an old soul; Uncle Ben used to jokingly reply that Peter must have been a taxicab in a former life. Not a taxi _driver_ , but the actual car. His first science project (a combustion engine that ran on pizza grease) started because of this ‘argument’ between the two.

 

But this – riding along with Johnny, occasionally piping up with directions from his phone as they meandered along the northern coastline of Long Island, spared from traffic by the odd hour of their drive so that it was just the two of them, the ocean, and the trees occasionally lining their path – had its own, powerful sort of appeal.

 

Ostensibly, Peter was keeping an eye out for their destination, but really he spent most of his time staring at Johnny’s profile, lit up gold by the gradually setting sun, and the smooth motions of his hands curled loosely around the wheel.

 

He’d somehow forgotten, back when he was making their plans, that Johnny grew up in this area. Really, the same could sort of be said of Peter himself – Queens wasn’t _that_ far from their current location – but Johnny’s comfortable familiarity with these roads was clear from the way he handled the occasional sudden bump or dip and anticipated each blind turn.

 

“So where are we going, anyway?” Johnny asked, not for the first time during their drive.

 

“I’ll tell you when we get there; just enjoy the drive until then,” Peter replied, worrying about Johnny’s reaction to his plan, also not for the first time during their drive.

 

“Easy for you to say; you’re not the one driving,” Johnny complained but there wasn’t any heat to it; he took the car along a curve until the sun was behind them, then tipped his head so the rearview mirror didn’t send the light directly into his eyes, coincidentally getting a good look at the scenery around them. “Nice view, at least.”

 

“Yeah, it is,” Peter replied with an exaggeratedly flirtatious tone; he waggled his eyebrows when Johnny glanced over, then grinned when he cracked up laughing.

 

“Smooth, Parker,” Johnny said once he had himself under control again, still smiling. Peter perked up out of his semi-comfortable slouch as they passed a road sign some time later and double-checked his phone, which caught Johnny’s attention. “We close?”

 

“Yeah; not long now,” Peter replied after a moment, nervous all over again. Maybe it was his pride or something, but he wanted to _impress_ Johnny, not an easy thing to do when Johnny could just buy whatever he reasonably wanted.

 

It’s not as if they were in one of _Peter’s_ many cars for this adventure, after all.

 

He would settle with just making him happy, even. Johnny deserved to be happy.

 

“Turn right, here,” Peter told him, and tried not to fidget at the confused frown on Johnny’s face as they pulled in to the parking lot of a hiking trailhead.

 

“Didn’t take you for the outdoorsy type, Pete,” Johnny said, parking in the lengthening shade of some trees when given no further directions. “Did you want to go birdwatching, or something?”

 

“Nah; this was just one of the prettier parking lots I could find on Google Maps,” Peter replied, unhooking his seatbelt before reaching down to grab his bag and the blankets, then carefully maneuvering his way out of the truck.

 

Johnny lingered in the car a while – carefully removing the needle for the depleted IV bag, then covering the small hole it left with a treated bandage to stop the bleeding – before grabbing his keys and circling around to Peter’s side of the truck. “Are we going on a picnic? Should I lock up?”

 

“No, and no,” Peter said cryptically, setting his armload down in the back of the truck before hopping in. “We’re going to the movies.”

 

Johnny _looked_ at him, then around at the almost-empty parking lot, before trying to make three separate gestures with his hands, each stopping partway through. “We’re in a parking lot, in the woods.”

 

“Well,” Peter took a calming breath, carefully unfolding a blanket over the floor of the truck without stepping on it. “I was thinking to myself, ‘What’s more date-like than a drive-in movie?’ Except how, you know, there _aren’t_ any drive-in theaters anymore. So I thought we could bring the experience with us.” He reached into his bag for a pair of earbuds, then held it and his phone up for Johnny to see. “I’ll even let you pick the movie.”

 

Johnny looked like he was trying not to laugh – not good. “So you want to want to cuddle and watch movies… like I talked about at lunch the other day?”

 

Peter pouted a little, “Well, yeah. But – we’re outside, see?” He pointed at one of the nearby trees; as if on cue, a leaf fell from one of the branches onto the pavement. “That makes it a date.”

 

“Dork,” Johnny snorted, but reached to pull himself into the back of the truck with a grin; Peter felt himself relax a little.

 

“Guilty as charged,” he answered, holding out a hand to steady Johnny when he wobbled a bit more than expected upon entry. Johnny shifted a little, embarrassed, so Peter took the hint not to acknowledge the moment of weakness, and instead sat down on the blanket. He fussed for a minute, adjusting the remaining blankets to serve as pillows, hooking the earbuds into his phone, and making himself as comfortable as possible before tugging on Johnny’s hand. “C’mere and snuggle me, already.”

 

“Next time, _I’m_ picking our date,” Johnny grumbled, but made himself comfortable half next to and half on top of Peter regardless. He took one earbud when Peter offered it to him, then stretched a little while Peter pulled up Netflix. “Glad I didn’t opt for the short bed, now.”

 

Peter hummed in agreement, holding the phone up so Johnny could see. “Anything catch your fancy?”

 

“Hmm…” Johnny gave the phone a considering look, reaching up to scroll through various titles. “… Too dry… too long… not cool enough… Wait –” Johnny paused, looking at one of the category of suggested movies. “’Because you watched Bloodhunter 7: Judgement Day’? Pete, I never woulda taken you for a ‘blood and guts’ movie type.”

 

“What? No,” Peter yelped, quickly scrolling the screen past that. “That’s a mistake. I wouldn’t – I mean, I –”

 

“Relax,” Johnny soothed him, once more taking control of the scrolling. “It’s probably just whoever shares your Netflix account with you.”

 

“There only person who shares my account with me is –” Peter almost bit his own tongue, mind blanking at the possibility that _Aunt May_ –

 

Oh, wait, no; he logged in to Netflix on Harry’s computer that one time.

 

“… Er,” he said eventually, then tried to shove _that_ concern to the back of his mind. “Uh, find anything?”

 

“Yeah,” Johnny said after a moment, and then clicked on something colorful, with anthropomorphized animals on the front. “I heard good things about this one.”

 

Peter eyed him playfully. “… You’re not a furry, are you?”

 

“Says the guy with animal powers, who dresses like an animal, calls himself a cross between a human and an animal, and regularly fights with other people in animal suits.” Johnny shot back. Peter opened his mouth to argue, couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t just embarrass himself further, then huffed and hid his face half in Johnny’s hair during the movie’s opening sequence.

 

Eventually, during the first musical number of the movie, Peter couldn’t hold back anymore. “I’m not a furry.”

 

“Of course you’re not,” Johnny ‘agreed’, voice sickly sweet.

 

Peter poked him in the ribs with the hand not holding up the phone. Johnny tried to flinch away, ticklish, and it was _on_.

 

The phone was the first casualty of the ensuing tickle battle, thoughtlessly dropped to one side as they tussled. It wasn’t long until Peter had Johnny pinned – _hello_ super-strength – carefully holding himself away from Johnny’s stomach, which was glowing again now that he’d lost his concentration on reabsorbing it. He pulled Johnny’s arms up over his head until he could hold them with one hand, and then playfully glided the fingers of his now-free hand over his ribs, feather-light. Johnny huffed, trying not to laugh as he wriggled, caught but still trying to ‘fight’ back. He added a bit more pressure to his touches, and Johnny’s huffing not-laughs turned into a sort of high-pitched keening.

 

Peter wanted to taste that sound, so he settled his hand more firmly at Johnny’s waist and leaned in for a kiss which Johnny lifted his head to meet him halfway for. They traded lingering, closed-mouth kisses for a while until Johnny started squirming, fruitlessly trying to get closer, so Peter settled himself more firmly on Johnny, groin to groin, and deepened the kiss.

 

Since Johnny hadn’t really been eating his nutrition lately, he didn’t really taste of much besides himself; there was maybe a faint hint of mint from the last time he’d brushed his teeth – probably for the photoshoot earlier – but other than that, Johnny was mostly just slick, moist _heat_. Still, Peter reveled in exploring that heat, sliding his hand down his back until his fingers _just_ brushed the waistband of those jeans, hesitating a moment there to trace the curve of his spine and the soft skin of his back, before sliding his hand down further, over the clinging denim, and grabbing his ass, hard.

 

Johnny choked briefly on a moan, squirming – almost thrashing – restlessly, trying to rub their groins together, before pulling back from their current kiss. He lightly bit Peter’s lip, tugging on it, then pulled back to gasp breathlessly. “ _Pete_ , lemme touch you, come on –”

 

From over by the trailhead, the sound of approaching voices finally penetrated their private little world.

 

They both froze in place.

 

“Right,” Peter blinked several times in rapid succession, momentarily in a daze. “We’re in a public place.”

 

Johnny took several deep breaths, and then schooled his face into something surprisingly normal; if Peter hadn’t been literally sitting _on his erection_ , he might have thought he was unaffected. Acting experience at work, he supposed, to have that kind of facial control on demand… -ish. Peter ducked his head down under the side of the truck, into the crook of Johnny’s neck, as the group of voices headed over to one of the only other vehicles in the parking lot, kissing his neck in apology when his breath made Johnny shiver. He carefully shuffled off Johnny as the other car’s ignition roared to life, then collapsed next to him. Half on his side, he could see Johnny’s dick still struggling to tent the tight denim of his jeans, and let out his own soft, strangled whimper at the sight.

 

His own erection throbbed painfully, and he dug the heel of his hand down against it to try and calm down. It didn’t help.

 

Eventually, Johnny started laughing. “Still think dates have to happen away from home?”

 

Peter swatted at him half-heartedly, but couldn’t help chuckle a little, as well. “Yeah, yeah; point taken.” He snagged one of Johnny’s hands so he could kiss the soft inner skin of his wrist, then let go. “Did you see where my phone got to? We might as well restart the movie.”

 

They rearranged themselves back into their earlier configuration – sharing earbuds, Johnny halfway on top of Peter – and Peter swiped the movie’s progress bar back to the beginning. Johnny was still chuckling a little, though.

 

“What’s so funny?”

 

“You do realize you’re going to have to hold your hand up in the air for, like, two hours, right?” He pointed out, and Peter paused.

 

Without further warning, he pulled Johnny on top of himself then scooted the two of them over to one side of the truck, then used a little webbing from the webshooters still on under his sleeves to attach the phone to the far side of the truck.

 

“Smooth,” Johnny approved, not bothering to move himself off Peter, instead just getting comfortable right there, the warmth of his stomach caught between them.

 

“Quiet, you,” Peter replied, reaching to press play on the phone, glad now he had opted for earbuds with a long cord. “Watch the furry movie.”

 

“Yes _sir_ ,” Johnny sassed, but settled down to watch anyway.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is kind of a little bit of everything, all rolled into one. 
> 
> Just a reminder, if there's a particular scenario you want to see in this story, drop me a line, either in a comment or on my Tumblr (link to follow). I'm also still open to 'last-minute' baby name suggestions. Also, I will be updating tags on this story with the release of Chapter 9, so be on the lookout for that.
> 
> Link to Tumblr: https://poplarpando.tumblr.com/ask

_‘Have you guys considered Jane, or Mary? They’re very good names for a child to have.’_

_‘Those names sound familiar for some reason,’_ Peter texted back to MJ, smirking down at his phone while waiting for the light to change so he could cross the street. _‘Do they have special meaning?’_

 

 _‘You think you’re funny. You are not.’_ MJ sent several minutes later, after he’d walked across; she must be working on something, then.

 

 _‘I’m hilarious.’_ He sent back, but still sent a message over to Johnny suggesting the names as possibilities. Johnny just sent him back a text message full of marijuana emojis in response, and Peter sighed, defeated. The cheerful jingle from the shop door as he pushed inside seemed to mock him.

 

It had been almost three weeks since Peter first learned that Johnny was gravid. He _wasn’t_ pregnant, as Valeria had been quick to point out to everyone once all the children returned from their excursion, and the fallout about not being told sooner had passed; the babies were in eggs, even if they _did_ get nutritional support from Johnny in the form of heat. Either way, everyone was getting anxious the longer the eggs stayed in Johnny’s stomach.

 

As soon as Reed had made himself tools capable of measuring the eggs’ progress like Peter had known he would, he spent a large proportion of time tracking the eggs’ sizes, embryonic development, and other vital stats, and comparing them with the norms of Cephean incubation and human pregnancy. He’d sent a message the day before, asking Peter to meet with him and Johnny in his lab later today to discuss some things. He also had suggested that Sophie would be an ideal name for a daughter, in honor of the Cepheans that started the whole process, despite the original, misunderstood nature of doing that.

 

Sue seemed to switch between being elated about being an aunt, and worrying about how her little brother would handle the whole hatching process. A typical Cephean clutch – each ‘Lightdrinker’ could have upwards of _forty_ eggs with plenty of room to eat, with their exceptionally elastic stomachs – can take _months_ to hatch internally, before they can be birthed orally. Johnny only had six eggs, but even so, if he followed a similar schedule to a Cephean hatching, he could be ‘in labor’ for around a _week_. Still, she’d been ‘sneakily’ leaving notes with name suggestions in Johnny’s vicinity. Johnny had threatened to stuff them all in a hat at some point to pick at random, but both Sue and Peter knew he wanted to put more thought into the action than that.

 

Verbally, Ben had latched on to Sue mentioning the ‘oral birthing’ process at some point, and teased the couple every time he saw them by saying they were so sickeningly sweet together, it made him ‘wanna puke babies’. He was also the one most attentive to Johnny’s physical concerns when Peter wasn’t around: carrying him to bed if he exhausted himself elsewhere in the building, or to the bathroom if his nausea made him unsteady on his feet, both of which had been happening more and more. Peter had also caught him skulking around with several large boxes after another lunch date with Johnny, muttering about a ‘nursery’, so he figured most of his support was shown through actions, and _definitely_ not with his words. The extra emphasis he’d been adding to his own name lately made _his_ opinion on names pretty obvious.

 

Peter hadn’t talked to Johnny about it yet, but Benjamin was fairly high on the short list of names he’d taken to keeping that he felt particularly strongly about. That name was a bittersweet one for him, for obvious reasons.

 

Like with Mary Jane, as the news of their impending parenthood had spread piecemeal out to their friends, each had had their share of name suggestions to offer. Some of the suggestions were blatant attempts to get one of the kids named after them, or someone important to them: Jennifer, Matthew, Daniel, Eric, Steven, Wyatt – or Wynona, Wyatt had insisted, according to Johnny, if the baby happened to be a girl – and now Mary or Jane.  Not all of their friends were Terrible People, though, so they also received their fair share of ‘normal’ suggestions: Gregory, Lee, Sera, Kevin, Ashley, Justin, Katrina, Paul, Lana, Donna, Kate, Eileen, Michael, Ruby, Neil, Dorothea, Keith, Iris, Eden… The list went on and on. When things like Torus started showing up as suggestions, Peter came to the conclusion that someone had turned it into either a drinking game, or a competition to see who could get the most outrageous reply back to their suggestion. He’d stopped responding when someone suggest they name one of the children June, after his Aunt May.

 

… Actually, they really were _all_ Terrible People, and he was ashamed to know them.

 

He hadn’t figured out how to break the news about the babies to Harry yet, without also revealing his identity as Spider-Man, but he was working on it. The closest he’d gotten was a discussion of celebrities’ relative attractiveness late the night before – possibly while Harry was drunk – which he gradually directed toward Johnny’s attractiveness, and how ridiculously attractive he thought any of his future children would be, a topic which had the benefit of being true, as far as he was concerned. Johnny was a bombshell – _ha_ – and he wasn’t half-bad himself; the only question he had there was the possible influence of the Cephean catalyst. Harry had grumbled about Johnny for a predictable length of time, then tried to change the subject slightly by suggesting that Johnny would happily fall victim to the fads of celebrity naming practices, and probably name any hypothetical children with fire-related names.

 

Of course, Johnny instantly fell in love with the idea when Peter told him about it later while they were having a LEGO Harry Potter date, _most definitely_ indoors and in private this time. After a few of the more obvious name suggestions like Blaise and Ember, Johnny had pulled up a site of baby names and their meanings while Peter tried to make a potion.

 

“Aidan?” Johnny read off, idly walking his character in circles on the screen with his off hand.

 

“That one’s not too bad,” Peter admitted, groaning quietly when the potion exploded in his character’s face.

 

Johnny hummed in agreement, scrolling down on his phone while on-screen, his character caught the edge of a suit of armor and accidentally walked through a doorway. “Let’s see… How about Hayden?”

 

“No kid of mine is getting named after Darth Vader by proxy,” Peter shuddered theatrically, setting up another attempt at a potion. “The guy’s a baby murderer.”

 

“Good point,” Johnny conceded, scrolling a little further down. “Eck; apparently, the name also means ‘heathen’. No thank you.”

 

“Where are you even _going_?” Peter asked, just now noticing Johnny’s half of the screen, and his character… swimming in the Lake, or something?

 

“Eh,” Johnny shrugged dismissively, scrolling further along. “How about Inigo?”

 

“Okay, one, neither of us is Spanish,” Peter said with a shake of his head, then yelled some abuse at the television screen when his potion blew up _again_. “And two, I don’t want to be murdered by a six-fingered man.”

 

“But they’d avenge you with a pretty sweet sword fight,” Johnny pointed out with a snicker, scrolling further down; his character had found their way out of the Lake again, currently turning lopsided circles around a pine tree somewhere. “What about Tana? It’s Greek, but apparently it means ‘fire or star goddess’.”

 

“Not terrible, but doesn’t that meaning seem a little pretentious?” Peter shot Johnny a teasing look. “Even for you?”

 

“Excuse _you_ ; of course any daughter of mine is going to be a goddess. Duh.” Johnny looked up from his phone for the express purpose of rolling his eyes at Peter. “Ooh,” he said after scrolling for a while and not finding anything to catch his attention. “Names with light-related meanings; those would work, too…”

 

“We’re _supposed_ to be playing together,” Peter groused, putting his controller down when his potion blew up for a third – or was it fourth? – time. He turned from his seat on the floor, half-crawling up onto the couch in Johnny’s lap, reaching for the phone. Johnny leaned away, holding the phone out of reach.

 

“Dawn?” Johnny suggested, scrolling quickly while evading Peter’s grabbing hands. “Kira? Lucy?” He ‘crab walked’ to the far end of the couch, scrolling like mad while Peter tried to pin his legs. “Phoebe? Robin?” He yelped when Peter grabbed a pillow and knocked him lightly in the head with it. He got one last look at his phone screen as Peter moved to pin him and steal it away. “Zia?”

 

“We’ve got time to figure this out, still,” Peter told him, leaning forward slightly to set the phone on an end table, before bending down to plant a kiss on Johnny’s pouting mouth. “Do you not like the game?”

 

“It’s not that,” Johnny said after a moment, shifting under Peter until he could rest his head against the armrest of the couch, not even trying to escape. “Everyone’s been working so hard, with all the check-ups and preparations, and I just… wanna contribute, somehow.”

 

“Who says you aren’t contributing?” Peter asked, a bit more sharply than intended. Johnny tried to look away, but Peter shifted until he could turn his face back toward him with a hand. “Johnny?” He asked, voice soft.

 

“I barely even understand what’s going on half the time,” Johnny admitted, closing his eyes and turning his face into Peter’s touch. “I just…” He took a deep breath, visibly trying to get a hold of himself. “Sometimes, I just feel like the consolation-prize parent.”

 

Peter swallowed convulsively, leaning forward enough to plant a kiss on Johnny’s forehead. In the back of his mind, he wondered if Johnny’s growing uncertainty was possibly the result of hormonal imbalances, but he had the forethought not to say that out loud; regardless of what might be causing him to feel this way, Johnny’s feelings were still, you know, _feelings_. Uncharacteristic or not, they were valid.

 

… And actually, Peter had the sneaking suspicion that they might _not_ be out of character.

 

“Listen to me?” He asked, placing a kiss on Johnny’s nose that made him scrunch his face up, then leaned back a bit. “You’re not the only one worried about what they have to offer our children,” he said, smiling sheepishly when Johnny looked at him. “But one thing I _know_ I don’t have to worry about is how much _both of us_ will love them, and put everything we have into making sure they have the best life possible.”

 

“If they’re even _a tenth_ like you, they’ll be amazing,” he continued softly, tracing a hand down Johnny’s chest to his stomach, soaking in the warmth there. In his current position, Johnny’s stomach swelled out just slightly, with the sort of soft fullness that came with a ‘food baby’ after eating a large meal, though Peter knew Johnny’s nausea had been especially bad for going on a week now, so he couldn’t keep anything down. “You give so freely, and with so much honesty, even when it completely turns your life upside-down… Forget consolation prize; you, honey, are the _grand prize_.”

 

Johnny sniffed then blinked several times, suspiciously. “Oh yeah?”

 

“No doubt about it,” Peter agreed, then leaned in to coax a few kisses out of Johnny. Now seemed like a pretty good time for what he’d been meaning to ask, now that Peter thought about it, if only he could remember where he’d stashed the little box-thing. The thought briefly slipped his mind, though, when Johnny threaded his fingers into Peter’s hair, tugging him in to deepen the kisses, while the animated sounds of bubbling liquids and forest creatures filled the background. He broke the kiss to slot himself smoothly between Johnny’s thighs, trailing light, teasing kisses down his throat when he tipped his head back, gasping for breath.

 

“Not sure if you’re trying to be a gentleman or something,” Johnny eventually said, voice breathy, thoroughly distracted from his earlier melancholy. “But you know we can have sex, right? Even pregnant women can have sex at a certain point.” He keened sharply when Peter tweaked one of his nipples roughly, through the soft cotton of his shirt. “Or… I think so, anyway.”

 

“Why _Mr. Storm_ ,” Peter teased, fingers catching the hem of Johnny’s shirt. “What kind of boy do you think I am?” Contrary to his words, he slid his hands up Johnny’s torso, firm enough to avoid tickling too much, then leaned forward to first place a kiss on his stomach, before trailing kisses back up his chest and gently biting his other nipple.

 

“ _Definitely_ the kind to put out on the first date, don’t even,” Johnny panted, trying and failing to hold himself still in Peter’s ‘hold’. He released his nipple with a soothing parting lick, then leaned up for a moment while Johnny shrugged his shirt the rest of the way off. He ground down subconsciously at the sight of Johnny stretched out under him, then had to quickly readjust when Johnny’s leg slid off the couch, and he nearly went with it.

 

Johnny snorted, and Peter pinched the skin right above his waistband in retaliation.

 

“I’m thinking we should move this party to an _actual_ bed,” Peter said, reluctantly backing off of the couch and Johnny, and then offered a hand to help tug him up afterward.

 

“Fine by me,” Johnny replied, slowly stretching with a teasing look in his eyes; Peter bit his bottom lip absently. “You got supplies, or do we need to hit the bathroom?”

 

“You don’t have anything in your bedroom?” Peter asked, waving Johnny on into the bedroom as he detoured into the bathroom. How difficult could lube and condoms be to find, after all?

 

“Ran out before the space trip, haven’t had reason to restock since then,” Johnny replied, pausing as he reached the windows to draw the curtains over the glass. He turned back to give Peter a significant look. “Until today, that is.”

 

“About time, then,” Peter called back, smiling to himself, half inside a cabinet when suddenly his spider sense **_screamed_ ** and the world around him exploded.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, boy; here we are. This one's a slightly shorter-than-average chapter, but I'm sure you'll understand why when you get to the end of it. On a more serious note, the last three lines of this chapter may be upsetting to some readers, so please keep your individual well-being in mind; if you want a warning of maybe when to stop early to avoid the worst of it, don't read after the paragraph that starts with Peter shouting "Don't move!"

Everything was kind of a blur for Peter for a while after that.

 

He scrambled to retrieve the rest of the costume from near the remains of the couch – thankful that he’d swung his way over earlier, and hadn’t bothered changing into normal clothes since they hadn’t planned on going out – then more carefully made his way back toward the bedroom, looking for Johnny.

 

At first, there was no sign of him, and Peter started tearing the remains of the room apart, trying to find a trace of him, on the verge of panicking. For almost a minute his mind was caught on the worry over whether Johnny could fly in his current condition, if he’d been blown out the window, when a soft groan came from a hole in the wall opposite the windows.

 

“Torch!” he shouted, relieved at the sound, and then leapt over the debris to peer into the hole. Johnny slowly got his hands and knees underneath himself, and Peter wrapped an arm around his shoulders to pull him fully upright. “You okay?”

 

“I’ve been better; you get the number of the bus that just hit us?” Johnny mumbled back in reply, tentatively touching a hand to his head. “Ow.”

 

“Stop that,” Peter scolded absent-mindedly, almost shaking with relief that Johnny seemed to be all in one piece. He reluctantly let Johnny go once he seemed moderately steady on his feet, and then picked his way out to the raggedy edge of the damage, looking around to try and get an idea of what happened. “There’s a big ol’ scratch in the building, though.”

 

“Just great,” Johnny grumbled, then bent over coughing. Peter started to make his way back before Johnny waved him off. “Go. Save the day. Get revenge for our ruined date.”

 

“Will do,” Peter replied, but didn’t move yet. “Will you be okay getting to the secure floors on your own?”

 

“I’ll be fine,” Johnny replied, tone slightly bitter though neither of them acknowledged it. Every hero knew the sting of being unable to help during a crisis somewhere. This wouldn’t even be the first time the FF went out without Johnny during the whole egg situation, though this was probably the closest any encounter had gotten during that time. “Flatten something for me, will ya?”

 

“You bet,” Peter promised, then gave in and hurried over, lifting the lower edge of his mask briefly to kiss Johnny on the forehead; he tasted like sweat, plaster, and something vaguely metallic. “Try to snag a shirt on your way down, so you don’t scare the locals.”

 

“Screw you,” Johnny huffed, smiling shakily. He pushed Peter back toward the hole. “Get going.”

 

Peter saluted, and then waited just long enough to see Johnny turn for the door before swinging out into the fray.

 

* * *

 

The whole thing was an X-Men fight that had gone _completely_ off the rails and spilled over all over the place, as it turned out.

 

If pressed later, Peter couldn’t tell you who all he’d ended up fighting, or even the ultimate duration of the fight once he’d joined in; all he could say for certain was that the Baxter Building took three more hits – one severe, the other two thankfully mild – and Peter took significantly more than that. He also handed out his fair share of punishment, webbing up anyone that he could find that would be stopped by that, and ‘flattening’ more than his fair share that wouldn’t.

 

He was stiff, sore, covered in something vaguely goo-like and his mouth tasted like concrete when he finally met up with the Fantastic Four Minus One at the end of the day.

 

“Spider-Man!” Mr. Fantastic exclaimed, shrinking down to his regular size from his previous position as an escape slide for a recently emptied apartment block with a boulder where their main exit would normally be, which Thing was busy removing. “Are you all right?”

 

“I’ll be fine,” Peter waved the concern away, surveying the extent of the damage around them. “How about you guys?”

 

“We’re all fine,” the Invisible Woman told him as she escorted a group of wounded but walking civilians toward the intersection where an ambulance had managed to make its way through, force field held over their heads like an umbrella for still-falling debris.

 

“Have you heard from Johnny, recently?” Reed asked, voice slightly lowered; Peter quirked his head in confusion, so he elaborated. “Lately, he’s sent us some kind of message about his location whenever we have… matters to attend to, but I haven’t received any notice from him yet.”

 

“Yeah; we were playing videogames when the Baxter Building got hit,” Peter told him, which was as close to the truth of their actions as he was getting with Reed, especially in public. “He was headed for the secure floors when I left him.”

 

“That’s strange,” Reed said to himself, frowning; either catching on to their conversation or the frown on Reed’s face, Ben and Sue made their ways over to them. “We should have received notice automatically of someone entering a secure area.”

 

“Maybe the system got scrambled?” Peter suggested, but a sense of foreboding settled in his stomach like a stone. “I’ll go track him down,” he volunteered, then shot off a webline and swung away before anyone could argue.

 

Johnny hadn’t made it to the secure floors, Peter was sure.

 

* * *

 

The logical place to start looking was the place he saw Johnny last, but just in case Reed’s systems _had_ been scrambled, and Johnny had arrived at the secure levels just fine and assumed the automated message had checked in for him, he started there instead.

 

Finding only sensitive equipment and shaken children, Peter carefully began tracing back the most likely route from there to Johnny’s destroyed rooms, on the off chance Johnny had gotten stuck or cut off somewhere along the way.

 

Most of the building was in good shape, if a bit rattled around. The two minor hits mostly looked to have just broken glass on several floors. The first major strike scored a pretty long gouge in one side of the building, Peter already knew, and the other punched a fairly large hole in toward the core of the building. Most of the damage was stable at this point, but he still kept a wary eye on his surroundings, that sense of foreboding growing heavier the longer he went without finding Johnny.

 

He thought briefly about trying to call his cell phone – it could act as a sound beacon even if Johnny was unconscious somewhere, after all – until he remembered taking his phone from him while they were on the couch. Still, on the off chance it’d survived and Johnny happened to pick it up, he slid his phone out of its little pocket on his costume, and dialed Johnny’s number, ignoring how his hands were shaking.

 

Surprisingly, the line began to ring – the phone wasn’t broken, then – and he listened to the sound as he jumped up through a hole between floors. He was almost back to Johnny’s room, at this point.

 

The phone clicked over to voicemail just as he caught sight of Johnny.

 

_‘Hey, you’ve reached the one and only Johnny Storm; I can’t come to the phone right now, probably off saving the world or something, but if you wanna leave a message, I’ll be sure – ‘_

Peter dropped his phone and ran. “Johnny!”

 

Johnny hadn’t even made it fifty feet from his bedroom before collapsing into the wall. He stirred a little at Peter’s shout, then immediately curled in on himself, almost into the fetal position, body shuddering and shaking violently. “Pete?”

 

“Don’t move!” He shouted, though Johnny didn’t really seem capable of moving much at the moment. He vaulted over a beam that shifted in a way that would have normally alarmed him, and then stumbled to a stop half bent over Johnny. “Johnny?”

 

“I – I think –,“ Johnny had a few false starts, his full-body shudders actually his body _heaving_ , on closer inspection. He turned into the wall, vomiting wetly, before turning dazed blue eyes Peter’s way.

 

Blood, as well as something viscous, chunky, and acrid-smelling dripped down over his chin and bare, pasty-pale chest. Peter, vision swimming, couldn’t see the familiar glow of the eggs from his stomach.

 

“– something’s _wrong_ ,” Johnny finished, weakly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All is not as bleak as it seems, let me get that reassurance out right at the start, here. Don't get me wrong, It's Bad, but... not quite as bad as Peter currently thinks.
> 
> Now for the bad news: I'm leaving town early Saturday, and will have little/no internet access for about a month. I'm going to try to get out one more chapter before I go, so I don't leave you all with That Mental Image while I'm gone, but realistically it might not happen. I'll be leaving my Tumblr's askbox open while I'm gone in case I can check it while away, so if you want to request a scene for this story - future or past - or suggest a baby name or tell me what a meanie I am, you can.
> 
> Link to Tumblr: https://poplarpando.tumblr.com/ask


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I managed to get out one more chapter before leaving, yay! It's short, but that's more because it's mostly a 'Peter being sad' chapter than because I was trying to hurry. (Though there was some of that, too.) It also doesn't help that Johnny's not exactly... an active participant in this chapter.
> 
> So, again; I'm going to be traveling with little/no internet for four weeks. Depending on downtime and stuff while I'm gone, I may (keyword: may) have a chapter for you all when I get back, but if not, I'll try to get one out quickly after I'm back/not jetlagged and such. 
> 
> In the meantime, feel free to leave me comments, either here or in my Tumblr askbox (link to follow) with things like baby name suggestions, scenes you'd like to see/know about/read from someone else's perspective maybe, or call me a meanie, you know. Whatever you want to send to me, I'd be delighted to see
> 
> Link to Tumblr: https://poplarpando.tumblr.com/ask

Peter sat, arms braced on his knees, head hanging between his shoulders, staring vaguely at the red of his gloves as he pushed his fingers together for a count of three, paused, then pulled them apart for a count of four. Together, pause, apart, hold. Repeat. Again – over and over, matching the pace set by the distant sound of beeping, almost lost under the low buzz of heating coils and frenzied shouting.

 

Together, apart.

 

Reed sounded frantic, Sue sounded like she’d been crying, and Ben, if he was around, wasn’t making a sound at all.

 

Together, apart.

 

His gloves were barely sticky, anymore.

 

He distantly registered the sound of sobbing, someone whimpering.

 

He slumped further in his seat. Together, apart.

 

“ – three are stable, but we need to –“

 

“ – about Johnny? His throat and stomach are –“

 

“ – no. No. No!”

 

Peter jolted upright, hands clenching into fists as he looked wildly around the room. “What?”

 

“Now’s not the time, Peter,” Reed sounded harassed, still covered in dirt from outside as he manipulated a set of unusual tools that Peter knew somewhere in the back of his mind to be remote surgical controls. Sue wasn’t far to his side, monitoring and adjusting a slew of supplementary equipment, though her gaze didn’t stray long from a cluster of screens that Peter couldn’t bear to look at.

 

Peter jumped in his seat suddenly and hastily opened his hands, staring at the red there that didn’t match the rest of his costume. Together, apart.

 

“- don’t understand it; there are shell fragments, but the sixth fetus is gone,” Reed mumbled more to himself than to anyone else in the room, and Peter finally saw Ben, standing still and silent like a statue, arms folded tightly across his chest, watching those screens.

 

“He’s upstairs,” Peter croaked out miserably, interrupting the dialogue that had started up between Reed and Sue in the meantime. He cupped his hands together, down between his knees, and sobbed.

 

He’d seen a tiny blob of red-pink, nearly lost between the blood and acid and chunks of shell and sizzling streaks of molten-hot yolk, when he’d picked Johnny up to rush him to the lab. When picking Johnny up had caused him to vomit, again.

 

“Oh…” Sue breathed, covering her mouth in horror, and joined Peter on the chairs, crying all over again.

 

Ben quietly left the room.

 

* * *

 

 

The surgery went on for hours. Or at least it seemed that way; Peter couldn't say for sure.

 

Then, finally, Reed straightened up from the surgical tools, and eyed his work critically. “I think they’re stable, now.”

 

Sue breathed a shaky sigh of relief, but Peter’s insides still twisted with worry. “What’s the prognosis?” He forced himself to ask.

 

“Two eggs didn’t make it, and a third was compromised,” Reed began, running a hand back through his hair, stretching his arm briefly out of shape before the hand slid back forward. “I’ve removed the… the remains,” Reed wavered for a moment, blinking back his own tears, before falling back on the facts. “I closed the perforations of the stomach lining and esophagus. Fortunately, the shells are more similar to snake eggs than bird eggs, so their more malleable nature reduced the amount of shards, though their tendency to adhere to one another had partially obstructed Johnny’s airflow.”

 

Peter felt himself go cold, despite the oppressive heat in the room, mind fixating on just how _easily_ Johnny could have suffocated before he found him. Them.

 

Suddenly, he really, _really_ needed to see Johnny.

 

He jumped out of his seat, jittery, and reached for his mask before he remembered the blood on his hands, and froze, almost vibrating in place. “I gotta – Can I? – I need to see –“

 

“Calm down!” Reed stretched an arm out to block his way, eyes wide with alarm. “You can’t go in there, yet!”

 

He ducked under the arm, then grabbed at his mask anyway, leaving dark smears along the underside of his jaw as he pulled it off, gasping in air. He couldn’t _breathe_. “I _need to **be there**_ –!”

 

“None of us can go in there, yet!” Reed shouted, which startled Peter enough that he didn’t try to head for the door again.  “The operating room is still heated hotter than a kiln! We’ll all roast alive if you open that door!”

 

Peter growled, but as soon as he got within arm’s reach of the door, he could practically _feel_ his spider sense shouting at him. “But after all that – and he’s alone again – I just –“

 

“We know,” Sue finally spoke up with a violent sniff, eyes and nose bright red from all the crying so far today. “I’m sure Johnny knows, too.” She stood up, then walked over to wrap an arm around one of his, and pulled him back to the monitors. “He’s probably still unconscious from the surgery…?” She trailed off, looking to Reed for confirmation, who nodded. “So, we wait, until he can heat the other four babies on his own, and we can lower the room temperature.” She seemed to regain her resolve the more she talked, standing taller and more calmly, and Peter envied her, because right then he was practically coming out of his skin.

 

“I want to be there with him,” he said eventually, voice plaintive, and finally looked at the two screens still lit.

 

The first screen was a live feed of the whole operating room. The air wavered over the table Johnny had been haphazardly laid out on. The walls, floor, and presumably the ceiling also, were covered in thick-looking, dark tiles interspersed with wide heating elements, bathing the whole room in ruddy orange light. The table and remote surgery apparatus looked to be made of a combination of the same material as the tiles, mixed with heavy-looking, probably-treated metal, its tools still suspended out over Johnny’s body, possibly to work toward re-sterilization in the blistering heat, endoscope drooped down like a curious eyestalk or something.

 

It gave him the creeps, he decided.

 

Johnny looked mostly the same as when Peter had found him earlier, other than the pallor of his skin – which couldn’t be properly distinguished in the tinted light in the room, though there were a few darker spots that could be cuts or bruises – and the blood that had coated from his mouth down his chest – almost to the waistband of his coincidentally-treated pants – which had charred and dried up in the heat, little pieces occasionally flaking loose and floating up, up, and away on the rising hot air. Combined with the pained tension set into almost every angle of his body, Johnny clearly wasn’t sleeping, but unconscious.

 

“You said before that you were with Johnny when the building got hit,” Reed said from somewhere behind him, voice quiet with the sudden arrival of exhaustion. “What happened?”

 

It took Peter a moment to remember what he’d told him earlier. “Yeah; I, uh – Johnny was adjusting the curtains, and I was in the bathroom when the blast hit. When I found him again, he’d been thrown through a wall on the far side of the room. He didn’t seem that hurt when I left,” he told them, voice turning bitter at the end with self-recriminations.

 

“Oh, Peter…” Sue breathed into the quiet after that, squeezing his arm again. He turned away, only to see the sympathetic look in Reed’s eyes, so he turned back to the second screen, which just listed Johnny’s status and assorted vital statistics. The door to the rest of the Baxter Building opened behind them, and Ben shuffled back in unnoticed.

 

“That doesn’t make sense,” Reed eventually spoke up, after a moment of thought. “The eggs that were broken were toward the front of Johnny’s stomach; if he was in the middle of fixing the curtains –”

 

“He’d had his back to the window,” Peter interrupted. “We were joking around – you know how we are.” The words felt sharp and hateful to say, so Peter stopped, raised his hands to maybe pantomime their positions, then stalled when he saw the blood on his gloves again. He dropped his hands, then, and forced the words out. “He was thrown forward – practically _stomach first_ – through a wall.”

 

He bit his tongue before he could finish the sentence with ‘And I left him there’, like he deserved, because Sue looked like she was about to cry again, and he’d made her cry enough for today.

 

Ben moved over to Reed’s side, and Peter noticed he was holding out something small wrapped up in a hand towel. “Stretch…”

 

“Ben? What –” Reed took the bundle from Ben, face crumpling as he folded back one corner, and Peter suddenly knew what was in the towel.

 

He pulled out of Sue’s hold, then sat down curled up on the floor as close as his spider sense would let him get to the door without giving him a migraine, face buried in knees tucked up near his chest, now-dry gloves laced together in the hair at the back of his neck, and cried until the door chimed for safe entry.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the super long wait for this chapter! I had some stuff that I had to take care of after I got back (which I finally finished on Friday), and, well... This chapter gave me a pretty hard time; something about it still feels a little off, and it's kind of short, but I don't want to drive myself nuts nitpicking it anymore. So have a present!
> 
> In other news, I think I've mostly decided on the children's names. I'm still going to leave my Tumblr's askbox open in case people have a great idea/want to convince me one way or the other, or if people want to make requests.
> 
> Tumblr askbox URL: https://poplarpando.tumblr.com/ask

Peter sprang to his feet almost before the door chime finished sounding, pushing the door to make it open faster, impatient. His breath left him in an involuntary rush as he entered the operating room, assaulted by a wall of still-very-hot, and therefore rather oxygen-poor air. Sue shouldered past him while he tried to catch his breath, long accustomed to dealing with sudden differences in atmospheric conditions.

 

A light touch to his shoulder as Reed squeezed behind him got Peter moving again, standing opposite Sue at the table, roughly level with Johnny's shoulders. Belatedly, he pulled off his gloves, now stiff with dried blood, and then reached out to carefully brush back a lock of golden hair. Everything was still _far_ from okay, but some corner of his mind, which had spent every moment since finding Johnny twitchy and frantic, made worse by the separation required for the surgery, finally subsided now that he could _touch_ Johnny again. Now that he could personally verify that he was recovering.

 

He slid his hand down the side of Johnny's face in a gentle caress, cupping his jaw so he could feel his pulse and his breathing while Sue rearranged Johnny's limbs more comfortably on the table, and Reed murmured something about a recovery room before heading back out of the room with a parting squeeze to Sue's and Johnny's shoulders.

 

"Where's Ben?" Peter asked, voice rough from his earlier histrionics, only just then noticing the absence of the large orange man made of rocks; spider senses or no, he was significantly more of a mess than usual today. It was understandable, but still; considering how devastating the last Ben-disappearance had turned out, his absence made Peter's stomach knot with dread.

 

"He's watching the children," Sue was quick to reassure him, though her gaze never left the resumed glow in Johnny's stomach. Peter looked, too, but had to tear his gaze away before he could figure out if the glow was brighter or dimmer than before, feeling sick.

 

Peter cleared his throat a few times, then nodded. "Makes sense; we can't have the mice unraveling the fabric of reality while all the cats are away." The half-hearted attempt at levity fell like a brick, none of them, including himself, really in the mood to be cheered up yet. Instead, silence fell over the room, broken only by the occasional rustle of fabric as one of them shifted position, or unconscious vocalization from Johnny. Sue held on to Johnny's hand once she'd finished fussing over his limbs, but Peter didn't change position, using the hand cupping Johnny's jaw to ground himself, until Reed returned, and he was forced to let go so the table could be wheeled out to the recovery room.

 

He followed hot on Reed's heels the entire way, determined not to let Johnny out of his sight.

 

* * *

 

Hours passed, and whatever reserves of energy Peter had been using to keep himself functioning started drying up before Johnny woke up.

 

His head was pillowed on a safety railing roughly halfway down the bed, and his eyes were stuck in a half-open, half-closed fugue state that allowed him to keep his eyes open without drying them out too severely. His arms curled around the railing, one reaching through so he could lay his hand over Johnny's, while the other curled around the bar of the railing itself to keep his body from falling the rest of the way out of his chair. Sue had crashed roughly half an hour after they got Johnny settled, so Reed had gently gathered her up in his arms the next time he came to check Johnny's vitals in-person, and carried her to bed to get some actual sleep.

 

Peter was a lot closer to asleep than awake, even hunched around the bed as he was, because it took almost two minutes for him to register what his eyes and hand told him, that Johnny's hand had twitched, then gone stiff under his.

 

He jolted upright to the sound of Johnny's breathing changing, then awkwardly tried to disentangle his arms from the railing without letting go of Johnny to mixed success, too busy watching him squeeze his eyes shut against the dim lighting of the room, before reluctantly opening them.

 

"Hey, stranger," Peter greeted him weakly, watching the probably-still-a-little-drugged confusion clearing from his expression.

 

"What happened?" Johnny croaked, free hand rising to touch his throat with a wince, before he froze, eyes going wide.

 

Peter's spider sense twinged a warning, so he was already prepared as Johnny scrabbled at his own stomach, panic probably keeping him numb to the internal lacerations he wasn't helping with his actions. He let Johnny feel the by-now familiar warmth of his stomach for a moment, before gently but insistently manhandling him back down against the bed. Once Johnny had settled again, staring intently at his own middle but showing no more inclination to suddenly lunge or flail anywhere, Peter sat back down in his chair, and tried to explain.

 

"There was an accident..."

 

* * *

 

"And... that's what happened," Peter finished with a deep, shuddering sigh.

 

Johnny turned his gaze away from Peter once he’d stopped talking, staring up at the ceiling, expression vaguely empty. With growing concern, Peter watched Johnny’s lack of a reaction after his extreme reaction when he woke. Eventually, Johnny took a deep, slightly shaky breath in, then let it our forcefully.

 

“Oh. Well that sucks,” Johnny said, as if Peter had just told him about misplacing his jacket instead of the miscarriage of one third of their unborn children and his own emergency surgery. Peter didn’t miss how Johnny’s hands hesitated above his stomach briefly, and then detoured to toy with his blankets without touching it. Peter reached for the hand nearest his, but Johnny pulled it away. “I’m actually still kinda tired, so…you don’t have to stay.” He faux-casually shifted onto his side to put his back to Peter, even though Peter just _knew_ that position couldn’t be comfortable.

 

“… All right,” Peter conceded, unwilling to be the reason Johnny stayed in a painful position right after surgery. He rose from his chair and walked to the door slowly, in case Johnny changed his mind; he didn’t.

 

One hand on the doorknob, he hesitated, and then looked at Johnny’s back, half covered by the bed’s sheet.

 

“You know I love you, right?”

 

The visible muscles in Johnny’s back spasmed. “… Yeah. Same.”

 

Squeezing out a sigh around the worsening weight in his chest, Peter slipped out of the room.

 

Instead of leaving, though, like he might have on any other night, Peter made his way to the nearest ventilation access, pulled the cover off with less finesse than he probably should’ve, then hoisted himself inside. It took him a few minutes to navigate his way back toward Johnny’s room, but eventually he found a small opening that looked in on the room from high up the side of one wall. Contorted into a lopsided S-shape between a pair of intersections, Peter settled his body down against the ductwork as comfortably as he could manage, quietly looking in on Johnny, not willing to leave him alone again.

 

Nothing seemed to happen for the better part of half an hour, then Peter noticed that Johnny’s shoulders were trembling, which quickly escalated into full shaking. Every now and then, small sparks floated up off Johnny’s hair or shoulder, and the faint smell of scorched ironing started to fil the room.

 

Peter curled his fingers into the vent’s grating, then leaned forward just enough to rest his forehead against the cool metal and struggled to breathe.

 

* * *

 

Peter was about at his wit’s end.

 

Since the Baxter Building was attacked, Johnny had been acting completely normal. _Too_ normal.

 

Peter knew he was trying to protect himself, or convince himself nothing was wrong, or _something_ , but he couldn’t get Johnny to talk to him. Sure, it was kind of hypocritical of him to criticize someone for following the ‘ignore the problem until it goes away’ method of interpersonal relationships, but… Well, he was starting to feel like the problem in this equation, and it kind of sucked.

 

Even if Johnny told him he didn’t want to see him anymore, he’d at least know where they stood, though he hoped they could still be friends, whatever ultimately happens. Providing he could catch Johnny somewhere long enough to actually resolve anything.

 

Johnny suddenly had twice as many shoots, appearances, and other jobs to do than before; he was even busier than he’d been before they went to space, if Peter remembered correctly. After Johnny bailed on five different attempts of his to spend time together in favor of agent meetings and limited contract negotiations over a two-week period, Peter decided to step up his game.

There was only one place he knew Johnny would be consistently, and he’d just have to catch him there, before their circumstances became completely unbearable and someone did something they’d regret. It was just as likely to be him as Johnny doing the regrettable thing, and…

 

And he was just really starting to miss holding Johnny.

 

So he made a few calls, cleared his schedule on Tuesday, and swung off toward the Baxter Building through the pre-dawn gloom.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The usual reminders, I'm sure you've seen them plenty by this point in the story. I'd meant to have this chapter out on Friday, but then I decided to include a certain scene in this chapter instead of the next, so the chapter kind of... ballooned out. You're welcome.

Quietly picking his way toward the back of Reed’s lab through a less-used secondary workspace, Peter tried to keep out of sight for the moment, feeling foolish the entire time. As much as he tried to convince himself to just walk up to the nook where Johnny got his weekly checkups, though, he couldn’t rule out the possibility of Johnny escaping at the sight of him, before he was close enough to keep that from happening, at least until Johnny had heard him out.

He heard Reed’s voice long before he could see them, pitched a bit louder than usual with concern. “ – been eating properly?”

Johnny’s reply was an indistinct, sheepish mumble at his current distance, so Peter picked up the pace a little. Not wanting to resort to eavesdropping, he turned the corner into the checkup nook just in time for Reed’s reply.

“Johnny, you know proper nutrition is important in your current condition. Have you been eating at all?”

Johnny just shrugged flippantly. “I’ve been taking the IVs like you told me to, what’s the big deal?”

Peter couldn’t see what expression Reed made in response to that, but he could see his torso inflating slightly. Keen to avoid Reed lecturing, and figuring Johnny felt the same, Peter interrupted.

“Are you still feeling sick?”

Suddenly inspecting his nails as if they were the most fascinating things on the planet, Johnny shrugged but still answered. “Not really.”

“Hello Peter,” Reed greeted him without looking his way, then reached out to clasp a hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “If you haven’t been ill, then why – ?”

“Because!” Johnny shrugged off Reed’s hand and stepped away, stopping abruptly when it became clear that moving away from Reed took him closer to Peter; Peter tried not to be hurt by that. Johnny’s gaze darted around the room like a cornered animal for a moment, probably trying to decide if he could fly away without burning anyone or breaking expensive equipment. Eventually, his posture deflated and he crossed his arms over his chest. Peter made note of the fact that he refrained from touching anywhere near his stomach, again. “I just don’t want to,” Johnny finished, much quieter.

Raising his hands up slightly as if he was approaching a spooked thoroughbred, Peter resumed slowly walking into the room. Either he saw something in Peter’s determined expression, or he clued into the tension in the nook some other way, because Reed looked between the two of them, and then promptly stretched his torso through the doorway and out into the lab proper.

Peter stopped once he was almost within arm’s reach of Johnny, trying to leave him a little space. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Johnny echoed back, avoiding eye contact by patting down his pockets for his phone. His voice was deceptively nonchalant when he asked. “What’s up?”

“Can we talk?” Peter asked, shifting his weight from one foot to the other to keep himself from taking a half step closer.

“What’s there to talk about?” Johnny said to his phone, trying to sidestep blindly around Peter and Reed’s lingering legs. “Anyway, if Reed’s done here, I really should get going –”

“Wait!” Peter lunged forward to grab Johnny’s shoulders, then immediately let go again, when he felt Johnny go stiff under his hands. “Please. Please, just… talk to me?”

Free again, Johnny nevertheless didn’t move; he still wouldn’t look at Peter, though. “Okay, sheesh…But like I said, what’s there to talk about?”

“You,” Peter replied, lifting a hand up to Johnny’s face, but hesitating before he made contact. Johnny’s gaze focused on that hand. “Me,” he admitted quietly, a lump forming in his throat. For the first time in over a week, Johnny looked him in the eye, and Peter suddenly understood why he’d been avoiding eye contact when he saw the anguish there, despite the unaffected pose he had adopted. He really, really didn’t want to say this next part, but managed to force the words out of his clogged throat. “The attack, and… and the babies.”

“I screwed up,” Johnny responded, voice equally strangled, “As usual.” He scoffed, then turned his head away again. “So what’s there to talk about?” He asked for the third time, struggling to recapture his nonchalant tone.

Abandoning his attempts at respecting personal space entirely, Peter turned Johnny’s head back to face him, while his other arm slowly snaked around his shoulders to pull him sideways against his chest. “It’s not your fault,” he insisted. He felt resistance against his hand when he tried to angle Johnny’s head for a kiss, and just settled for kissing his cheek. “If it was anyone’s fault besides the bad guys’, it’s mine, for leaving an injured pregnant man alone in a crisis.”

“Gravid,” Johnny corrected automatically, then shoved at Peter’s shoulder. “You had a job to do. I was the genius that thought they could make it down a giant building with internal injuries. Besides, I’m the one that told you to leave.”

“But I’m the one that still actually left,” Peter argued, and then huffed a little sigh as it occurred to him how ridiculous, and frankly pointless, their arguing was. Making a mental note to call MJ and apologize for roughly 80% of their conversations in the future, he decided to change tracks for now. “Why won’t you eat?”

Johnny bit his lip, clearly not wanting to answer, then all of a sudden, he turned in Peter’s arms so he could bury his face in his neck. Peter adjusted his hold to accommodate the shift, rubbing a hand up and down Johnny’s back when he started to shake. He was so focused on offering comforting physical contact, that he almost missed it when Johnny finally did reply.

“Because I’m hungry.”

Peter was perplexed by his reply at first, until he thought back to Johnny’s complaints of feeling too full to be interested in food. He tightened his hold on Johnny, and as if that was some sort of signal, Johnny’s shaking turned into sobs. Soon enough, Peter was rubbing his tearful face into Johnny’s shoulder.

He barely registered the sound of footsteps retreating, and the whirring hum of privacy measures coming online around the nook.

* * *

Settled under unfamiliar sheets and occasionally teased by a random whiff of Johnny’s aftershave off his borrowed pajamas, Peter contemplated the phone in his hand.

After their mutual breakdowns in Reed’s lab that morning, Peter had stuck by Johnny’s side for most of the rest of the day, barring a brief quest appearance at the grand re-opening of a shopping center. It had actually been kind of interesting to sit in on his phone meeting about endorsing a line of sunblock.

Still emotionally raw, and unexpectedly drained by the end of the day, he’d accepted the offer of a guest room on the floor Johnny was staying on while his was repaired. He had actually half-expected, half-hoped that Johnny would offer to share with him; sleep would certainly come easier to him if he was constantly faced with evidence of Johnny’s well-being, but he’d seemed pretty keen on some ‘me-time’ in the end, and he figured that he’d pushed enough for one day. Johnny did give him a sheepish look and a kiss goodnight before they parted ways, though, which mostly kept him from worrying about Johnny avoiding him again.

So now he was lying in bed, back half-propped up against the headboard, staring at the clock display on his phone as it progressed, fairly late in the evening but still hours away from the time he usually turned in, trying to convince himself to make the call he’d been putting off for… well over a month now, almost two. Yikes.

Growing more agitated the longer he just… laid there, doing nothing, he tossed the phone down on the far side of the bed, and then threw back the covers. Bracing his hands against the mattress, he shifted his legs so he could stand up, with the idea of going to check on Johnny. Surely that would calm him down and –

Peter stopped, still in the position to push himself up from the bed. His head dropped down, almost level with his shoulders.

No. He needed to stop putting this off.

Turning, he picked up the phone again, cradling it between his hands for another long moment. “You can do this,” he told himself. “Just open Contacts, and scroll down.” Fitting words to actions, he followed his own instructions. He couldn’t make himself look at the contact picture.

“Now just hit the Call button,” he said, voice light to try and convince himself that this wasn’t a big deal; a huge deal. He took a deep breath, held it, but couldn’t stop himself from shutting his eyes at the last minute as his finger made contact with the little green phone shape. Immediately, both hands went for his head: one held the phone by his ear, while the other fisted in his hair and pulled nervously.

The line rang longer than it usually would’ve, which Peter attributed to the late hour, then clicked as the receiver on the other end activated.

“Hello?” An elderly female voice asked. “Peter?”

Peter smiled reflexively at the sound of his aunt’s voice, even as his heart continued to climb up his throat with anxiety over how to go about discussing him, Johnny, and the babies without also giving away his giant, spider-shaped secret.

That – not telling her about Spider-Man – was for her safety, but even though it would definitely complicate her life, Peter just could not imagine never telling May about his children. He’d wanted to tell her right after he himself found out – honest – but had blanked on how he’d explain 1) knowing Johnny in the first place, 2) why he went into space with him to a planet of flaming lizard-people, and 3) .. Well, actually, those were the two main points that had stopped him, really.

Later, he had maybe gotten a bit caught up in properly courting Johnny and it was just… easy, to keep putting it off.

But now, faced with the danger of the children possibly dying before May even knew they existed, it seemed more important than ever that May knew about them, in some capacity or another, even if it might cause avoidable complications, if...

Anyway. Earlier, when Johnny had explained away his inevitable commentary during the sunblock endorsement meeting as a passing intern, Peter had had an epiphany.

“Hey Aunt May, how’re you? Listen, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you, but first; do you remember back when I interned for Reed Richards?”

“Yes, I believe so. What about it?”

“Well, you see, I kinda became friends with his brother-in-law, but the point is, there was this party a couple months back, and, well…”

* * *

There was a moment of stunned silence after Peter finished retelling the slightly-adjusted story of the eggs. The ‘May version’ put the party on Earth after the FF returned from space, where perfectly-normal former-internship-friends would be able to attend. Out of pity for his poor conscience, and so that it would be easier to not mess up later, he stuck as close to the truth as possible, including the catalyst cocktail and… somewhat inebriated and very-detail-free-when-speaking-to-his-aunt relations.

“So these, um, eggs, they’re… in your friend’s stomach?” May said after Peter had given in and started pacing the room.

“Yeah,” he answered, trying to keep his answers simple until May shared what she thought about the whole thing, then ended up babbling anyway. “The shells are coated in this sort of indigestible glue that protects them from stomach acid and only sticks to other shells. It’s actually really fascinating, if you –”

“Calm down, dear,” May admonished him affectionately, before her tone turned serious again. “And this boy – you said his name was Johnny? – you care about him?”

“I do,” Peter admitted, voice barely above a whisper. He stopped in front of the bedroom window, gaze passing over the city lights.

“You don’t sound very sure about that,” May observed, quietly.

“No no! I am!” Peter rushed to reassure her, and then cleared his throat, embarrassed. He straightened out his posture, as if that would make his voice sound more assured over the phone. “I do care about him. A lot.”

“But?” May pressed, gently relentless.

“… But,” Peter finally caved. “It seems like every time I leave, bad things happen to him. The bleeding, all the nausea, and now, with the miscarriage… I’m worried that he’s going to resent me, at some point.” He braced his free arm against the glass, and then rested his head against it. “That, or he won’t even survive the pregnancy.”

“Peter…” He heard may sigh into the receiver. “I wish I could tell you differently, but there’s always some danger with any pregnancy. From what you’ve told me, though, it sounds like he’s already getting the best medical attention available, even considering… the unique circumstances. As for him resenting you,” Peter heard fabric rustling over the line, and the distinctive squeak he’d associated with May’s favorite chair for almost a decade. “Honestly, I think most mothers end up resenting their partners while they’re pregnant, at least a little, and especially toward the end; how comfortable do you really think pregnancy is, after all? But I wouldn’t take any of that to heart, at least until the children are born and they can sleep through the night.”

“Yeah, you’ve got a point there,” Peter admitted, smiling to himself.

“And if he doesn’t like you then, for whatever reason,” May sniffed, tone clearly doubtful. “Then he’s as foolish as Ruth’s magazines make him out to be.”

“Hey!” Peter protested, even if he couldn’t stop smiling from May’s automatic defense of him. “That’s my boyfriend you’re badmouthing there!”

“Is he?” May asked, suddenly serious again. “Your boyfriend?”

Peter thought through the words for a moment before speaking, carefully. “I’ve known Johnny for a… pretty long time, at this point. And yeah, sometimes he drives me up the wall.” He smirked to himself a little, and then reined himself in again. “But he also lights up every room he walks in to. Metaphorically, of course,” he hurried to clarify. “He’ll drop everything to protect his family, and he really understands me, and where I’m coming from. He’s just… a beautiful person, inside and out. We didn’t really date before the party, but now that I’ve got him I… really don’t want to let go. So… yeah; we’re boyfriends.” He finished, lamely.

“Oh, Peter…” May sniffed once, loudly; Peter hoped, probably futilely, that he hadn’t made her cry. He hated making her cry.

That was probably part of why he still hadn’t told her about Spider-Man.

Before that guilt-train could get rolling again, May’s next words derailed it. “You’ll just have to marry him, then.”

“Oh, uh, I –,” Peter coughed, finally straightening away from the window. “I may have, perhaps… already, uh. Bought. A ring?” He coughed again, as if that was going to save him.

May gasped quietly, and then proceeded to scold him. “Peter Benjamin Parker, you weren’t planning on proposing before I’d had the chance to even meet the young man, were you?”

“No! Uh,” Peter coughed again, then scrubbed his free hand back and forth through his hair because that definitely wasn’t going to help his case. “Of course not, May; I would never do that to you…” Hearing how sarcastic that sounded, Peter winced.

May huffed disbelievingly. “’Of course not’. Well then, when should I expect you two?”

“Huh? Expect?” Peter pulled his phone away from his ear briefly to make sure nothing had happened to the signal, but it was fine.

“For dinner,” May clarified. “So I can meet him. Unless the two of you would prefer lunch?”

‘Oh,” Peter felt foolish for a moment, then his shoulders slumped as he thought back to the morning, in the lab. “He’s… kind of been having some trouble with food, lately.”

“Poor thing,” May sympathized, trailing into thoughtful silence. “How about the two of you come over and watch a movie with me, then?”

“I’ll have to check with him to figure out his schedule and whatnot, but yeah; we could probably swing by for a movie.” He turned back toward the bed, drained by the emotional rollercoaster this call had turned out to be, then froze. He side-eyed his phone, as if he could see his aunt through it. “… Which movie?”

“Nothing ‘untoward’, I promise,” May assured him laughingly. “Just ‘Pride and Prejudice’.”

Peter continued his trek back to the bed, and sat down. “The one with Keira Knightley?”

“The one with Colin Firth,” May corrected him, sounding a bit too gleeful for Peter’s piece of mind.

“Isn’t that, like… five hours long, or something?” He shifted his legs back under the covers, and then scooted until his back touched the headboard.

“Five and a half, so plan for closer to seven hours with breaks,” May told him, then pre-emptively dismantled his grounds for arguing against such a long movie. “I haven’t seen you in so long, dear, and I’ve missed spending time with you.”

“Ugh, fine,” he groaned theatrically. “We’ll watch your celebrity crush in period clothes and a wet shirt.” May just laughed at him. Peter shifted back down until his head touched the pillow; the conversation seemed to be winding down, and he actually felt tired enough he could sleep, now.

“… Hey, May?” Peter asked after the silence had gone uninterrupted for a while, voice small.

“Yes, dear?”

“Are you… y’know, actually okay with this?” Peter may have held his breath, listening for her answer.

“It’s certainly… unusual,” May admitted after a while, and Peter squirmed a little. “Alien reptiles and accidental babies and all… but it sounds like you’re where you want to be, and anything that makes you happy is A-OK in my book.”

Peter let out the held breath in a soft ‘whoosh’. “You’re not disappointed?”

“A little bit,” she acknowledged, and Peter’s chest hurt, until she continued. “Because I thought Ben and I taught you how important it is to use proper protection when being intimate with someone.”

Caught between relaxing and remaining anxious, Peter pushed for clarification. “And the rest of it?”

“Doesn’t disappoint me at all,” May reassured him, shrewdly guessing at the heart of his worry. “I love you, Peter; who you find attractive or love isn’t going to change that.

Peter let himself relax finally. “Love you, Aunt May.”

“Love you too, Peter,” May replied, and he heard her chair squeak again. “Now, it’s getting late; get some sleep, and talk to your Johnny about the movie.”

“Will do,” Peter promised. “Night, May.”

“Good night, Peter.”

Peter ended the call, and then set his phone down on the side table.


	13. Chapter 13

“Stop freaking out,” Peter told Johnny, glancing briefly up from the text he was writing out on his phone.

 

“Who’s freaking out?” Johnny deflected, definitely freaking out; this was the fourth reflective surface they had passed that he’d used to check his hair. In one block.

 

“It’s just my aunt; you’ve fought robots and aliens larger than some _towns_ , and she’s just, you know, a regular human. How are you nervous?” He asked, finally sending the text and putting his phone away.

 

It had taken four days for their schedules to align with May’s long enough to watch the movie, and Peter _maybe_ hadn’t, in fact, actually told Johnny what they were doing until that morning when he’d confirmed they were all free in the afternoon. Considering how stressed Johnny seemed to be about this, Peter was beginning to regret that oversight. In past-him’s defense, though, it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

 

.. Okay, so _maybe_ he’d also been a bit distracted relishing their renewed closeness, after the past couple weeks.

 

“Anyone that could raise you _definitely_ has _some_ kind of superpower, at least,” Johnny argued, falling behind slightly as they turned to walk up to May’s house. Peter turned to wait for him at the door, smiling in a way he hoped was encouraging. “Like super-patience, or super-BS-detection.”

 

“Ha _ha_ ,” he deadpanned despite his smile, then reached for Johnny’s hand when he got close enough again, giving it a gentle squeeze. “You’ll be fine; she’s going to love you, promise.”

 

Peter reached out to knock with his free hand, but before he could, Johnny tugged on their clasped hands. “Should I, ah… button up my jacket?”

 

“What for? You already look more like you should be on a yacht than usual, so I don’t –” Peter nearly bit his tongue shutting his mouth at the unimpressed look Johnny gave him, and suddenly he could see his stomach glowing through his shirt. Vaguely paranoid, Peter glanced around for any potential witnesses that could take advantage of knowing about the glow, but Johnny had his back to the street still, and the only other living thing close enough was a stray dog, and it was busy trying to lick old cheese off an empty pizza box it had apparently liberated from a nearby trashcan.

 

Peter narrowed his eyes at it.

 

“… You don’t need to,” he finally replied, reluctantly looking away from the dog. “I already told her about the eggs, and what all happened with that. And before you ask,” he continued, seeing Johnny open his mouth to interrupt him. “I also told about how we met while I was interning for Reed.”

 

Comprehension dawned on Johnny’s face and he closed his mouth, so Peter turned back to the door and knocked. Nothing happened. Just as Peter was about to knock again – he knew from experience that it was sometimes hard to hear someone at the door, depending on what part of the house you were in – Johnny squeezed their joined hands, and Peter decided on a whim that he clearly needed a distraction. With that in mind, he turned back to Johnny again, cradled his free hand around the base of his skull, and tugged Johnny forward into a kiss. Johnny’s cologne was heady at this distance, and Peter wondered idly how much trouble he’d get in for dragging his hand the wrong way through Johnny’s hair if it gave him better leverage to chase the lingering taste of toothpaste mint in Johnny’s mouth, and –

 

“Don’t stop on my account,” an amused voice said from the door’s general direction.

 

Johnny nearly jumped out of his skin, literally, considering the barely-there flicker of flames ruffling his hair. Peter was distracted from the way Johnny’s back bent over the porch railing, kept from toppling over by their linked hands, because he himself was busy turning beet red and stammering.

 

They’d been making out, like teenagers, on his aunt’s doorstep.

 

He was _never_ going to live this down.

 

“Aunt May, I – that is, when did you get – wait, nevermind, that was dumb, I mean – how long –,” Peter cut himself off when Johnny flailed with his free arm, trying to right himself, carefully tugging him back upright.

 

Still smiling, May turned to Johnny, completely disregarding Peter’s less-than-coherent recovery. “Hello, dear, I’m May, and judging by that rather… enthusiastic greeting I just received,” She cut her eyes in Peter’s direction playfully, and offered a hand. “You must be Johnny; I’ve heard quite a bit about you.”

 

“All good things, I hope,” Johnny reached for her offered hand with his free one and a matching smile, but from the stiff way his other hand flexed against Peter’s, he suspected Johnny was… less comfortable than he appeared.

 

“The way Peter tells it, you outshine the noonday Sun,” May replied, then winked at Johnny as Peter responded in a perfectly fitting and mature way that sounded _absolutely nothing_ like squawking.

 

“You make me sound – I didn’t say that!” He let go of Johnny’s hand so he could cross his arms in front of himself in an ‘X’ shape to help underscore his completely rational argument. It was true that he’d been calling May more often over the last three days, but _just_ for the sake of catching her up on what had been happening with Johnny and the babies. That was _it_ , just… nice, informational phone calls. Nothing else.

 

When he tried to _calmly explain_ this, though, May huffed, shifting to stand next to a bemused Johnny. “And yet, I remember you going on for over an hour yesterday about how he fell asleep in the middle of waxing his car. He was practically effusive,” May said in an aside to Johnny, casually linking her arm around his. Johnny looked at Peter, eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and then started to smirk as May continued. Traitor. “And the day before that, it was all I could do to get a word in once every five minutes while you told me about the model dinosaur free-for-all with his niece and nephew. It was sweet, but I would’ve had to be deaf not to hear how gone you are.”

 

May started tugging Johnny inside the house, who followed obediently, while Peter tried to come up with an appropriate reply. “You – you don’t – you make me sound like I’m crazy!”

 

“Aren’t you?” Johnny finally broke in, pausing in the doorway to look back at Peter. “Even a little? I’d like to think I’m worth going a little crazy for; _you_ are.” Peter tromped behind the two into the house, blushing and maybe a little tongue-tied, as May giggled.

 

They came to a stop in the living room, mildly cluttered with the evidence of a life in progress, with the exception of the three-seater sofa placed opposite the television. Something about the room niggled at Peter’s brain, some minor difference that he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but May distracted him before he had too much time to think on it.

 

“Peter, could you get the movie set up while Johnny and I grab the popcorn and drinks? I made a sweet bowl and a savory one.” Peter didn’t have time to argue before May used the arm she already had curled around Johnny to pull him toward the kitchen. So… movie-setup; he could do that.

 

Peter was digging around the cluttered coffee table, looking for the DVD player remote, when May and Johnny came back in. Johnny had a large bowl balanced atop each hand while May carried a short stack of cups and a double-walled pitcher of lemonade. Finally spying the remote, he stood up to take one of the bowls from Johnny – the sweet mix, judging by the flecks of drizzled chocolate, banana chips, and distinct aroma of peanut butter – then sat down on the left side of the couch. Johnny hesitated, glancing at May and the drinks she had gone straight into pouring, before sitting in the middle of the couch, next to Peter. May placed a glass in front of each of them on the coffee table – there was _just_ enough room for each cup plus the pitcher for refills – before joining them on the couch.

 

Johnny moved to pass her the savory popcorn bowl, which smelled mostly like butter, cheese, some sort of herb, and garlic, but May waved him off. “That’s all right, dear; why don’t you hold it so everyone can reach?”

 

The niggling feeling came back as Johnny resettled the bowl in his lap and Peter pushed the button on the remote to start the movie. It grew when, mouth full of salty-sweet deliciousness, he caught May shifting against the couch while Elizabeth Bennett slogged through the mud to visit her ill sister. It finally clicked during the Netherfield ball when Johnny automatically reached into the popcorn in his lap, quietly popping a kernel into his mouth, and May smiled, way more smugly than the shenanigans on-screen warranted.

 

May’s favorite chair wasn’t in the room.

 

After that, Peter paid significantly more attention to how much popcorn Johnny ate without even noticing, especially right after someone else reached into the bowl. May caught him watching once, and picked up her lemonade so she could discretely flash him a ‘shh’ gesture while she drank. Peter nodded minutely, reaching into the savory bowl for a few kernels, even though he preferred the sweet mix, just to see Johnny grab out another kernel, munching with a soft impressed noise as Rosing Park appeared on-screen for the first time.

 

It might’ve been a little underhanded, but anything that could sneak past Johnny’s psychosomatic aversion to eating, and all that.

 

“Whoa, didn’t see that coming,” Johnny commented, caught off-guard by Mr. Darcy’s sudden and despairing proposal. Clearing his throat, he picked up his lemonade and took a hesitant sip, probably thirsty from all the salty popcorn he’d been tricked into eating.

 

“I don’t think Lizzie did, either,” Peter replied, eyeing the drinks, considering how the salty popcorn made him thirsty, and the sourness of the lemonade could become a bit too much without something to cut it, like something sweet, which in turn caused cravings for something savory or salty…

 

It was a ploy, a self-perpetuating cycle of snacking. He gave May another significant look; he’d always known his aunt was clever, but this was downright _devious_.

 

She winked at him when he tipped his head from one snack to the other, then quietly excused herself to the restroom when Part I ended.

 

“That Darcy guy’s kind of a jerk,” Johnny observed as he took the sweet popcorn bowl from Peter so he could get up and switch discs. “Still, pretty cool movie so far; I’m kinda surprised I haven’t seen it before, though.”

 

“This version’s kind of old, at this point,” Peter acknowledged, tipping his hand side to side in a ‘so-so’ gesture, and then popped out the second DVD and set it in the tray. He sat back down next to Johnny, closer than before. Their legs pressed together from knee to hip. “Though there are a bunch of different versions, so you’d think you’d’ve seen at least one of them. I’m surprised they didn’t ask you to star in the zombie one, actually.”

 

“You’re kidding, right?” Johnny looked at him doubtfully, but whatever expression he currently wore must’ve convinced him, because he groaned, then turned so he could press his face into Peter’s shoulder. “I’m too pretty to be eaten,” he complained into the fabric of his shirt.

 

“There, there,” He cooed faux-sweetly, petting Johnny’s hair with his free hand. “I don’t let the big, bad, dead people get you.”

 

Johnny mumbled something that sounded unflattering, and then turned his head so he could see the screen again, looping the DVD’s title screen. “Who does Lizzie marry, in the end?”

 

Peter tried hard not to think about the box he’d rescued from the wreckage of Johnny’s room that morning, and shrugged his free shoulder. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”

 

“Jerk,” Johnny shoved at him with his right hand, while his left snaked between Peter’s back and the seat back, curling around his waist. “Fine, don’t tell me.”

 

“And ruin the surprise? Never,” He promised, bracing his left hand against his heart while his right curled around Johnny’s shoulders. Catching Johnny trying to stifle a yawn, he tipped his head to rest against his. “You getting tired?”

 

“I’m okay,” Johnny reassured him, even as he snuggled closer. “You warned me this was a long movie. Five hours, right?”

 

“Five and a half,” he corrected as May returned, giving the two of them a little extra space when she sat back down.

 

“Do we need to stop here?” May asked, a little concerned when Johnny didn’t straighten back up for the second part of the movie.

 

“Nah; I can make it,” Johnny said, lifting his head while Peter reached for the remote, then settled back against him. “This is just more comfortable.”

 

“All right, dear,” May said quietly as the movie reopened right after Elizabeth’s refusal of Mr. Darcy, and it struck Peter how Johnny’s nerves about meeting May had thwarted. With _prejudice_. “But be prepared to be quizzed about Pemberley, later.”

 

Peter smiled to himself, and settled in to watch the rest of the show.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we're coming up pretty soon on some important stuff, but I was kind of hoping for one or two more scenes before we get there. Problem is... I'm kind of drawing a blank. Normally, I'd just skip on to the next scene I do have planned, but... Yeah. Anyway, I wanted to ask again if people had any thoughts or requests for happenings between this point, and Johnny going into 'labor'.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had some struggles with this one (mostly centering around How Much Is Too Much Accent for Ben), but I wanted to get this posted before I head out of state to get a good spot to see the solar eclipse on Monday. (Coincidentally, that is also supposed to be my first day of classes, but the university is making a special exception for the day).
> 
> Also, I'm still debating whether or not Peter and Johnny actually 'finish what they started' this chapter in Chapter 15, so if anyone wants to weigh in on the subject (yes, no, in a side work, or whatever) go ahead and let me know.

“ – yeah, and this one, too.” Peter decided, pointing at ‘Shiloh’, halfway down the paper between them; across the table, Johnny picked up his phone.

 

“That’s one of my favorites, too; I’ll add it to the shortlist.” Johnny finished typing the name in while Peter switched out the paper between them for a new sheet of names. Almost immediately, one caught his eye, so he pointed to it, using his finger as an axis to turn the paper around so Johnny could read it. “How about Wynne?”

 

Johnny hesitated a moment, before obediently leaning in to consider the name. “I like it and all, but –,” he glanced over at the black screen of his phone, expression dimming a little. “… Don’t we kinda already have too many?”

 

Peter blinked. “Isn’t having a variety kind of the point? So we don’t end up stuck calling one of them something kinda terrible, just because it was the only thing on the list?”

 

“All my choices are awesome, shut up,” Johnny huffed, almost playful, before deflating again. “But, I mean… We have a _lot_ more names than children, now.”

 

Before their previously-happy moment could spiral down into an unsalvageable mess, Peter crawled out of his chair, over the table, and into Johnny’s lap. Tilting his head to one side, he considered Johnny, his expression, the tenseness in his shoulders, then looped his arms around his neck, one hand curling up into the prickly-short blond hair at the base of his neck, while the other braced against the knobs of his upper spine.

 

“It’s not your fault,” He reminded him quietly, carding his fingers through his hair in a hopefully-soothing manner; he used the contact to shift Johnny’s head, gently tugging backward until he could kiss him. He kept kissing him, sliding his hand forward to hold his jaw just so, until Johnny finally started kissing him back. He pulled back with a few feather-light kisses that were more the suggestion of contact than actual pressure, and then tipped their foreheads together. “And it’s not as many as you think, when you also consider middle names.”

 

The corner of Johnny’s mouth twisted up in an attempt at a smile. “Figured you’d want all their middle names to be Ben, Peter Benjamin Parker.”

 

“What if they’re all girls?” Peter asked, in lieu of arguing with him. He was partially right, after all; he _did_ want at least one of them to be named Ben _somewhere_ in their name, but _all_ of them would be a bit… excessive.

 

“Benjamina, then,” Johnny replied, straight-faced, then cracked up when Peter groaned.

 

“ _No_ ,” Peter let go of Johnny just so he could brace one hand at his waist and shake a finger at him, like a stereotypical disappointed mother. “Bad boy.”

 

Johnny gave him his best flirty smirk; it was… pretty impressive. “For you? Always.”

 

Peter shivered.

 

Just when he’d decided to give in and figure out what that smirk tasted like, Ben hollered from somewhere down the hallway.

 

“’Ey! Lovebirds! We got somethin’ to show ya, so stop suckin’ face and get out here!”

 

“Can it wait, say, twenty minutes?” Peter called back, slotting his mouth over Johnny’s before he could make his own commentary.

 

“Jus’ put yer pants back on and get movin’.” Ben’s voice started getting louder, closer. “Don’ make me come in and getcha; see if I won’t drag ya out here in yer birthday suits.”

 

Both of them fully clothed, he and Johnny shared a _look_ , mouths curving in matching evil grins. Ben would never _actually_ do it if the kids were around, so a little mischief wouldn’t hurt anyone.

 

Peter jumped off Johnny’s lap, and they both scrambled to get out of their clothes.

 

Already bare from the waist up, Peter had his pants about halfway down his legs when he heard the door start to open, so he immediately dropped to his knees, the worn material of his jeans threatening to bust a seam under the strain, and buried his face in Johnny’s crotch.

 

Johnny’s t-shirt and lounge pants had given him plenty of time to sit back down once he’d stripped compared to the fasteners Peter had had to deal with.

 

Peter tried to focus on Ben’s horrified scream at ‘catching them in the act’, instead of the feeling of Johnny’s semi-erect member brushing against his cheek through the soft cotton of his briefs, or his own erection, trying to tent out his own boxers from having the object of his desires so close he could almost literally taste it. It had nothing to do with ‘being caught’. Probably.

 

He fisted his hands in his boxers when he felt Johnny’s cock twitch, and tried not to whimper. This prank seemed to have backfired.

 

“My eyes!” Ben yelled, covering his face. “Now I’m gonna need brain bleach – getta room!”

 

“We _did_ ,” Johnny replied breathily, probably only half faked at this point. “You’re the one who barged in here.”

 

One hand still over his eyes, Ben turned, reaching out blindly, searching for the door.  Grumbling about emotional scarring, he found the doorframe by stubbing his toe against it, then shuffled through.

 

Okay, so maybe the prank wasn’t a _complete_ dud.

 

There was a moment of silence between them, and then Johnny started snickering. Instead of removing his face now that the prank was over, Peter hesitated a moment, then nosed a little further down, just to hear Johnny choke on air.

 

Well, since he was already here…

 

Ben called back at them half-heartedly from the hallway just as Peter adjusted his weight to _actually_ start something, as it were. “At least put some pants on an’ come see what we wanna show you.”

 

Reluctantly, Peter pulled back, and Johnny sighed, shakily. “Ah – yeah. Fine; we’re coming.”

 

Ben howled again from the hallway, then stomped heavily away. Johnny blinked at Peter, catching the double entendre only after the fact, and Peter couldn’t help but laugh.

 

Prank officially gold.

 

Peter stood back up, one hand holding the waistband of his abused pants while he offered the other to Johnny, pulling him to his feet. “Come on; we might as well go see what they want.”

 

“If we have to,” Johnny sighed faux-dramatically, brushing much closer to Peter than necessary to grab his shirt from the table behind him; Peter took the opportunity to curl his hands around his hips, thumbs _just_ hooking under the waistband of his underwear. No longer supported, his jeans puddled back down around his knees.

 

“We can always pick up where we left off, later.” Peter coaxed the briefs down incrementally, and generally thwarted any attempts Johnny made to follow his suggestions and put clothes on. He could feel the heat radiating off his stomach, standing this close together – it warmed something inside him, as if to match.

 

“We actually have to go see what they want in order to do that,” Johnny pointed out, unfairly reasonable. Peter pouted at him, trailing his hands up his sides with barely enough pressure to avoid tickling him, then shuffled back a step so he had space to pull his pants back up.

 

Johnny pulled his shirt on while Peter was busy with his fly, hair messy and soft when it poked back out through the neckline. Peter’s fingers twitched when he saw it, tracking the shine of half-curls and flyaways with his eyes. He reached for his shirt blindly, but didn’t put it on, instead waiting for Johnny to bend down to pull his own pants on. Leaning in, he placed a kiss on the back of Johnny’s neck, vaguely pleased to see his skin prick with goosebumps. “I think you’re turning me into a nymphomaniac.”

 

Johnny snorted, shaking his head as he grabbed Peter’s shirt from him. “Nah; you’re just sexually frustrated.” He ushered Peter into his shirt, then started on the buttons for him; he was a lot faster than Peter at slipping the small discs of plastic into place, and Peter couldn’t decide if he should feel jealous, or impressed. Maybe both.

 

“Well, what about you?” Peter countered belatedly.

 

“Never said I wasn’t,” Johnny replied, using his hands at Peter’s collar to pull him in for a deep, searing kiss, and then pulled back so he could brush his nose over Peter’s. “Come on.”

 

Peter watched Johnny walk to the door, then turn to wait for him. He cleared his throat, then made a point of adjusting himself in his pants while Johnny watched, and followed him out.

 

* * *

 

Ben kept his distance as they joined the rest of the family by the elevators, eying Johnny’s mussed hair like it was going to bite him.

 

Peter smirked at him, and Ben’s frown turned into a scowl.

 

“Now that we’re all here,” Sue said, pointedly ignoring the way Ben grumbled again about brain bleach. “We wanted to show the two of you something, and get your input.”

 

“About what?” Johnny asked, obediently entering the elevator when Sue gestured to it, the rest of them following. From his position, Peter couldn’t see which floor button was pushed, but he didn’t have to wait long to find out.

 

“Redesigns,” Reed answered, as if that explained everything, mostly preoccupied with the children, and once the elevator doors opened, it kind of did.

 

Reconstruction was well underway on Johnny’s rooms, though some walls were still little more than framed suggestions, the whole area eerily empty without any furniture in place.

 

Johnny looked around, then shrugged at Reed, clearly not understanding. “I thought we’d already gone over the design and all the new toys you wanted to add since the whole place had to be gutted?”

 

“For most of it, yes,” Reed nodded, then glanced at Ben.

 

“There’s still one room ta talk about,” Ben finished for him, then led the way across the empty floor, to a room next to Johnny’s old bedroom that already had the interior layer of walls up. If Peter recalled correctly, there used to be a linen closet and storage room in this area. Looks like it was set to be something else, now.

 

“Yeah?” Johnny asked, as Franklin ducked around Ben to get in the room first; something inside made a loud click, and then the whole room seemed to hum. Peter waited with Johnny as the rest of the group walked in ahead of them, then followed along at the rear; he figured his presence here was at least partially a formality, but, well. He _was_ planning on hopefully making it more his business, soon. When the time was right.

 

The first thought Peter had about the room was ‘warm’. And yeah, maybe it was a few degrees hotter in this room than the others, but what really sold him on it was the colors in the room. The walls depicted a wraparound view of a geologically vibrant canyon system, outlined by cliffs, hoodoos and stone arches in various shades of red, orange, brown, and white, against a muted pink sky. It simultaneously reminded him of parts of Cephei XII, Mars, and the American Southwest, though he couldn’t definitively place any single feature or its origin. Small furniture pieces crowded the edges of the room: drawers, something similar with rails and a padded top, a plush looking chair, and other more generic pieces in dark wood and earth tones that helped play into the gradual gradation of color values in the room, pale by the nearly-white ceiling, almost black on the floor.

 

Peter had his suspicions from this much, but the item in the middle of the room, with the rest of the Four Plus Two gathered around it, left no room for doubts.

 

Those were _definitely_ bassinets. Round bassinets, secured together in a sort of ‘four-leave clover’ formation with a tall-but-weirdly-empty-looking monstrosity of a mobile sprouting from the center point like a tree.

 

“Wow,” Johnny found his voice first, and Peter nodded along. Wow, indeed.

 

“We didn’t want ta get too carried away on the rebuild witout lettin’ ya have a say,” Ben explained, sheepishly rubbing a rocky hand against his head; Peter couldn’t help but notice how well he matched the décor, being all rocky and orange and all.

 

“Is this from Valles Marinaris? I think I recognize this fork,” Johnny asked while pointing at a ‘distant’ section viewed mostly from above, but left no time for a reply before he gestured at the room in general. “This looks phenomenal, guys, but I gotta say, it looks pretty, well, _done_ to me. What sorta input do you need?”

 

“Most of it’s a temporary mock up,” Franklin interrupted excitedly, brushing his hand through a lamp demonstratively; the lamp’s outline flickered as it was disturbed – it was a hologram, that hum was probably the emitters – before reverting to its original shape.

 

“You can change the theme, if ya wanna,” Ben said, and Sue held up a remote demonstratively, then flicked through a few different patterns over the walls and ‘theme sets’ of furniture, shifting through materials and styles almost too fast to follow – jungle, circus, clouds, seaside, and so on – before returning to the original slightly-alien desert. The only items to stay throughout were the bassinet-clover and the chair in the corner.

 

Johnny started to turn to Peter, but he nudged him back around, gently; until he found the time to Ask, Johnny had the ultimate say on all of this. Besides, it all looked good to him.

 

“Ah, no, I – I like it, like this,” Johnny admitted, almost shyly. He walked toward his family until he could reach for the bassinet-clover; when his hand didn’t slip through – proving that this item, at least, was really there – he latched on tight. “Who did this? I doubt this is a standard job.”

 

“I did,” Ben said, back straightening with pride. “It took some doin’ – and I hadta restart after the attack busted up the last ones – but after that it was clear flyin’.”

 

“The mobile is programmable,” Reed spoke up, looping a hand around the ‘barren’ branches of the mobile. He pressed one of a series of buttons recessed into the main trunk of the mobile, then snapped his arm back out of the mobile and into proportion as small glowing planets, stars, and other astronomical phenomena flickered to life and began to orbit.

 

“Speaking from experience,” Sue picked up the thread of conversation, after they had all spent some time appreciating the almost mesmerizing swirl of pint-sized celestial bodies. “You’re going to be spending a lot of your foreseeable future in this room, so I figured you might as well be comfortable.” She nodded toward the chair, turning toward it before stopping short. Sitting dead center on the chair as if it were a throne was Valeria. She looked back at them imperiously for a moment, and then ruined the effect by kicking her legs out, knocking her heels against the upholstery.

 

Reed blinked, then looked around his person as if just now realizing that Valeria had moved.

 

“This is perfect, you guys,” Johnny sounded a bit choked up, so Peter came up behind him and wrapped an arm around his waist. The contact seemed to bolster him, so he didn’t sound quite so shaky afterward. “Thank you.”

 

“You’re very welcome, Johnny,” Reed said.

 

“What’d you expect, kid?” Ben asked, gruff in his embarrassment.

 

“That’s what family’s for,” Sue agreed with a soft smile.

 

Family could be pretty amazing, Peter decided, not for the first time.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait on this one (my last semester was just Not Good), and for any potential roughness you might come across. Let me know if you spot something, and I'll try to get it cleaned up as soon as possible.
> 
> With that out of the way, heed the increase in rating and enjoy what is, essentially, an extended sex scene that ballooned to over double its intended size.
> 
> Seriously, this chapter is pretty much just (my still very amateurish attempt at) porn.
> 
> Well. Porn and monotremes, that is.

Gradually, other tasks and projects reasserted themselves into the Four’s lives, until only Johnny was left with Peter in the nursery. He had his head tipped down, staring into one of the combination bassinets with a small, thoughtful sort of frown on his face.

 

It made his lower lip pout out just slightly, and Peter wanted to bite it.

 

“Watch out,” He teased, sidling closer until he could wind an arm around Johnny’s waist. “You’ll give yourself premature wrinkles, pulling a face like that.”

 

“Jerk,” Johnny huffed faux-indignantly, but Peter could see the corners of his mouth trying to twitch up into a smile, so he counted it as a win. Johnny made a show of trying to tug himself free, but Peter just slid his other arm around him, and pulled the two of them flush together.

 

“Look who’s talking,” Peter replied, then leaned forward to nip at that lower lip before Johnny could try to reply, and they both ended up bantering away any chance of nakedness for the night. Not to give the wrong impression, because Peter was grateful – _so_ grateful – for all the nursery stuff… but he really kind of just wanted to get back to trying to make Johnny wail.

 

… Well it _probably_ gave the wrong impression. Or something. Maybe not.

 

Before Peter could get too lost in the complexities of implicit versus explicit intentions and gratitude, Johnny’s hand curled around the back of his neck, just teasing the fine hairs at the edge of his hairline, and Peter jolted back into the present. “So…” He let one hand slide down from Johnny’s waist, a little too low to be properly on his hip, but slightly too high to be properly on his ass either. “I seem to recall that we were in the middle of something, before all the surprises.”

 

“Oh, really?” Johnny hummed, sliding his hand up into Peter’s hair while the other snuck under Peter’s shirt and settled just below his ribs. Peter let his other hand drift down to match his grip not-quite on Johnny’s ass, and Johnny’s breath caught. He gave a sharp tug on Peter’s hair in retaliation, and that brief zing of pain made his pulse pound.

 

“What makes you say that?” Johnny continued, noticeably more breathless than before, and Peter used his new hold to pull Johnny’s groin into his and grind the two of them together.

 

“Well,” Peter began, crowding Johnny backward out of the room even as he held them together, worrying at his lip to keep some modicum of composure between the friction of moving, the bite of his zipper, and Johnny’s wandering hand under his shirt. “I seem to recall, in _vivid_ detail, kneeling between your legs when you were nearly naked.”

 

“Yeah? Did you like the view?” Johnny used his hold in Peter’s hair to tip his head to the side, trailing teasing kisses up his jaw to his ear. Anticipating some teeth or maybe tongue against the shell of his ear, Peter was surprised instead when Johnny gasped, stumbling on an upturned floor panel.

 

He was shifting his grip down and picking Johnny up before he even really realized he was doing it.

 

“Oof. Hi, there,” Johnny grinned down at Peter from his new elevated position, resettling his hands on Peter’s shoulders, having been dislodged from their previous positions in the sudden move.

 

“I think I like this position better,” Peter decided, gentling digging his fingers into Johnny’s ass demonstratively. Johnny laughed a little shakily, then bent down to kiss Peter stupid. So stupid, in fact, that he didn’t realize they’d reached the elevator until he walked them straight into the wall next to it.

 

He freed one hand just long enough to hit the call button, but was too preoccupied with kissing Johnny and biting his lips red to think much more on it.

 

Luckily, the elevator was empty when it arrived.

 

Peter shuffled them into the elevator, lowering Johnny just enough to sit precariously on one of the side handrails. Johnny broke their kiss so he could select the right floor, and Peter took advantage of the distraction and extra support to push Johnny’s shirt up with one hand, over the warm glow of his belly up under his arms, then dipped his head in to lick, kiss, and bite at Johnny’s nipples.

 

Johnny faltered, keening, before pulling himself together enough to get them underway. He swatted Peter’s shoulder, then completely ruined the effect by holding on tight. “You know n-nothing’s gonna happen there, right?” Peter gave a slightly sharper nibble to his current prize and kept pushing his shirt up. Eventually Johnny got the message and let go long enough to shrug the shirt off. “It’s not like eggs need milk or anything.”

 

Peter pulled back to admire his work, and verbally sabotage himself. “Except for monotremes.”

 

Johnny blinked at him, still holding his shirt as if unsure what to do with it. “Huh?”

 

“Monotremes. You know, like platypuses? They lay eggs and still do the whole ‘milk’ thing,” Peter explained, and actually made an inarticulate sound of loss when Johnny draped his shirt around his neck, partially obscuring his chest again.

 

“… Did you just compare me to a platypus?” Johnny asked, skeptically.

 

“… No?” Peter tried, wincing.

 

Johnny continued to give him a doubtful look for a moment, before rearranging his expression into a pout. “So you’re saying you think platypuses are sexy.” He exaggerated the pout of his lips into a full-on ‘duckface’.

 

“No, that’s not what I –” Peter tried, then just gave up with a sigh and buried his face into Johnny’s neck, breathing in the scent of warm skin and cotton. He waited a beat. “Okay, you got me.”

 

“Really?” Johnny sounded surprised, and Peter had to fight back a grin so he wouldn’t feel it.

 

“It’s their little, webbed feet. They just drive me crazy, every time,” Peter answered, then began softly kissing back up Johnny’s neck. He pulled back once he’d found his way to Johnny’s lips, and they just looked at each other for a moment.

 

Johnny started to snicker, and Peter grinned.

 

“Webbed feet, huh?” Johnny tittered as the elevator doors opened, and Peter once again picked him up and held him close, just to feel him. Johnny slung his arms around Peter’s shoulders loosely, muscles relaxed. “I’ll have to remember that.”

 

“Please don’t,” Peter dutifully gave his token protest, maneuvering their way around generically inoffensive furniture to Johnny’s generically inoffensive temporary bedroom. He hadn’t really calmed down during their trek, but he could feel himself growing more excited the closer they got.

 

When they were almost there, though, Johnny reached out and pulled them to a stop on another doorway. It wasn’t really enough to _force_ Peter to stop, but dislocating or wrenching your partner’s shoulder wasn’t exactly sexy. “Hold up.”

 

“What is it?” Peter asked, obligingly lowering Johnny to the floor when he began to squirm.

 

“The guest bedrooms aren’t any better stocked than my room was,” Johnny pointed out, and Peter watched on as he opened the bathroom door and began rifling through cupboards.

 

He walked up behind Johnny when he bent to check under the sink, nonchalantly curling his hands over Johnny’s hips and rocking his still-clothed erection into the cleft of his ass. “We can skip the penetration, if there isn’t any.”

 

“Not happening,” Johnny said, surprisingly forceful. He straightened up after a few moments more, box of condoms in one hand and lubricant in the other; his shirt was even still around his shoulders. The look he leveled on Peter was so intense it was almost a glare. “Do you remember just how much time we wasted looking for lube on Cephei XII? Time where we could have been having sex?”

 

“I seem to recall us coming up with a pretty good workaround that time,” Peter pointed out, voice hushed as he relived his still-spotty recollection of their first time together. He traced Johnny’s lips slowly with a finger, until he turned his head slightly so that it slipped into his mouth. Peter’s breath caught, for a moment.

 

Johnny sucked on Peter’s finger suggestively for a moment before letting it slip back out of his mouth. “Yeah, which led us to all of this. Not that I’m complaining,” he said, loosely looping his occupied hands over Peter’s shoulders. “Other than all the nausea, anyway. But it’s not like this was a consequence either of us were expecting.”

 

Peter rocked his head side to side, slowly tracing his fingers down Johnny’s chest to frame his abdomen, trying to focus on that warmth for a moment and _not_ all the heartbreak that he’d failed to stop that came with it. “If not for that night,” he eventually remarked, rubbing his thumbs in gentle circles. “I don’t know if I ever would’ve realized that I –”

 

“Shh, I get it,” Johnny interrupted Peter with a quick kiss. “And I’d like to think that we would’ve figured it out.” He paused, then smiled playfully. “Eventually. …Probably.”

 

“Probably, huh?” Peter snorted, and, serious mood once again broken, allowed himself to be pushed back, out of the bathroom, then on into Johnny’s temporary bedroom itself. He used Johnny’s draped shirt to pull him into a kiss then slid it from around his neck and tossed it toward a corner. “Can we _finally_ get naked now?”

 

“You need permission?” Johnny asked, carefully lobbing the supplies onto the bed before casually reaching for the waistband on his lounge pants and no, actually, Peter _didn’t_ need permission and hastily reached for the fly on his own pants.

 

… Not that that might not be fun to try, sometime.

 

Peter was peripherally aware of Johnny stepping out of his pants and away from him as he yanked his zipper down and struggled to kick his pants and boxers away before remembering his shoes were in the way. He glanced over briefly as he pulled his foot up for better leverage to just shove all of it off and swayed precariously from the sight. Johnny was sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning back on one hand while the other fondled himself over his briefs which he apparently hadn’t bothered to remove yet. His hair looked like he’d been flying in a tornado, and corners of his eyes were crinkled slightly like he wanted to laugh, but the lip pinched tight between his teeth gave away how invested he was in Peter getting his clothes off.

 

Peter’s dick gave a _very_ visible twitch and he _did_ end up tearing his pants, after all.

 

Finally pulling himself free of the mess, he closed the distance between them, cradling the back of Johnny’s head with one hand so he could bite that lip himself, then lick his past it into the increasingly-familiar moist warmth of Johnny’s mouth. His other hand occupied this time by joining Johnny’s over his briefs, tangling with his fingers and feeling the shape of his dick in turns.

 

“You’re still dressed,” Johnny mumbled into their kiss at one point, and it took Peter a moment to remember he still had his shirt on. In response, Peter slid his hand down from his neck to oust Johnny’s hand so both of his were framing his clothed groin.

 

He gave a meaningful squeeze, and Johnny keened. “So’re you.”

 

“So do something about it,” Johnny countered, putting his own hands to use on Peter’s shirt buttons, trailing biting kisses across his collarbone when the shirt was open enough to allow for that. Peter tipped his head up to the ceiling for a while, reveling in the feeling while teasingly jacking Johnny through the fabric. He waited until Johnny had almost finished with the buttons before making his own move, curling his fingers under the waistband of his briefs so he could feel the swell of his ass, the cut of his hipbones, the smooth warmth of his groin and every inch of skin as he slowly coaxed the soft cotton down, then away. He ended the motion on his knees between Johnny’s legs, mouth practically watering at this new vantage point.

 

“Beautiful,” Peter murmured, struck again by how lucky he was, to be here, now, under these circumstances.

 

Johnny flushed a charming pink in the cheeks, and averted his gaze. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

 

“Rude,” Peter huffed, smiling despite himself as he shrugged his shirt off and settled his hands on Johnny’s knees to push them a little wider. Johnny’s breath caught as he shuffled forward into the newly created space, sliding his hands up his inner thighs as he went. Taking hold of the base so he could angle Johnny’s dick toward his mouth he leaned in so closely that his breath blew wetly over the head. “You’d think you don’t _want_ a blowjob, or something.”

 

“If you don’t quit with the teasing and _do something_ I swear I’m gonna –” Johnny threatened, and Peter waited for exactly this moment to roughly tongue the slit of Johnny’s cock until he almost squealed, then eagerly swallowed him down. He was so concentrated on the _heat_ and _texture_ and _taste_ of Johnny in his mouth that it felt like he didn’t even have two braincells to rub together to figure out what to do with the hand _not_ holding Johnny’s dick at the right angle and jacking what wouldn’t fit in his mouth. For a while it sort of hovered in the air, then squeezed Johnny’s thigh, then a needy throb of his own neglected dick pulled it down to stroke himself in time with the bobbing of his head.

 

Johnny fell back against the bed, and it disrupted Peter’s rhythm just enough that he paused to get his breathing under control. Switching hands to even out the slick slide of his hands over the both of them, Peter just stared at Johnny, watching as he pulled a little further back from the brink of orgasm, until their eyes met, and Johnny handed him the lube and one of the condoms with an inarticulate sound of desperation.

 

He took them almost in a daze, wiping his hands against the top sheet that was one of the few pieces of bedding to remain on the Human Torch’s bed even if it’s borrowed, so that he could get the condom packet open while Johnny scooted backward up the bed.

 

Rolling the condom on felt like it took more sense than he currently had, but Peter managed somehow and crawled his way onto the bed and on top of Johnny. Johnny immediately pulled him down into a searing, needy kiss, and Peter almost lost himself again in the contrasting tastes and sensations, until he felt Johnny hooking a leg over his hip, felt the warm, dry weight of his heel grind up the back of his leg.

 

He could take a hint.

 

Johnny’s hands found their way into Peter’s hair as he kissed his way down Johnny’s chest while Johnny shifted his leg from around Peter’s hip to over his shoulder. Peter took his dick in his mouth again, alternating between idly sucking and tonguing at the head while most of his attention was on slicking up his fingers _without_ squirting lube all over the bed. If not for his convenient ability to stick himself to things he might have failed at this, but he managed to get his fingers poised and ready with minimal collateral damage.

 

He let Johnny’s dick slide out of his mouth, watching as it slapped wetly against his glowing abdomen before flicking his gaze up to check in with Johnny. Johnny’s eyes fluttered open after a moment of stillness, gaze confused and sort of vague.

 

“We okay here, Torch?” He asked quietly, just barely brushing one finger against his hole meaningfully.

 

“Yeah,” Johnny blinked several times and swallowed, trying to pull himself at least mostly together. “Yeah, we’re good. More than good. Just, you know, ‘go slow’, ‘be gentle’, ‘it’s been a while’, and all that.” He tightened his hands in Peter’s hair but didn’t even try to push him anywhere. Peter obliged him anyway by first leaning in for another kiss, then he ducked back down to gently mouth at his balls as he started to work him open.

 

Johnny’s background commentary of moans, sighs, whines and other mutterings picked up in volume as Peter worked, turning to bite kisses into the thigh over his shoulder as he steadily worked more fingers in. Eventually though, Johnny’s insistence and Peter’s own assessment of his readiness agreed; he made one last quick pitstop to lube himself up, then hooked Johnny’s other leg over his shoulder and slowly—so, so slowly—bent him in half so he could kiss him as he lost himself in Johnny Storm.

 

The heat was almost all-consuming, the slick slide and grip of him, chasing his own pleasure while simultaneously hunting for just the right angle and technique to get Johnny wailing. There was Johnny—always so bright and beautiful—scrabbling to hold onto Peter while he ramped up to an almost brutal pace, before he seemed to give up, bracing one arm against the suddenly-much-closer headboard for leverage while the other franticly matched pace with Peter on his dick.

 

Later, when Peter came back to himself, he would be embarrassed about how quickly he finished, after weeks of teasing, interruptions and anticipation, but at least it allowed him—half blind and hypersensitive, reflex still twitching his hips minutely into Johnny’s ass—to watch as Johnny shuddered and twitched through his own orgasm, spilling warmth between them all over his own stomach, breathing out a shaky sigh.

 

Peter mustered his own jellied limbs when Johnny started shifting uncomfortably, carefully pulling out and sliding off the bed as Johnny slowly lowered his legs back down. After he’d muddled through disposing of the condom, he turned to look back at Johnny, mouth already opened to ask a question, when he stopped at the perplexed look on Johnny’s face.

 

“You okay?” he asked, cautiously walking back to the bed. While Johnny chewed on his reply for a moment, he surreptitiously tipped his head to assess between his legs, because he _knew_ his own strength, but he hadn’t exactly been in the best of control there. It was a more arresting sight than he’d expected, twitching and puffy and slick with lube, but thankfully _only_ with lube, as far as he could see, anyway.

 

“I think… one of the babies just kicked…?” Johnny’s voice trailed off, unsure, one hand splayed over his come-covered stomach. Peter grabbed a couple of tissues from the bedside table before crawling back in alongside Johnny. He used one of the tissues to clean off Johnny’s hand and stomach, then laced his own hand with Johnny’s over his stomach.

 

“Anything else?” Peter asked, curiously; all he could feel was smooth muscle, warmth, and maybe the vaguest impression of something rounded.

 

“No,” Johnny shook his head, shifting their joined hands over his stomach. “There was just this sort of ‘thwap’ while I was stretching.” He gave a sort of baffled shrug, or as much of one as can be done while lying down. “I guess someone didn’t appreciate being jostled?”

 

“I guess not,” Peter agreed, shifting so he could continue cleaning Johnny up with his free hand. And maybe fingering that twitching, puffy hole a bit more, or at least until Johnny swatted his hand away, oversensitive. Peter kissed him sweetly in apology, then finagled the top sheet out from underneath them and then over, at least until it protected their modesty if someone barged in.

 

“I wonder how much longer they’ll be,” Johnny murmured, settling against Peter’s side when he laid back down.

 

Peter curled his arms around Johnny and pulled him closer, almost on top of him. “Me too.”

 

“Guess we will,” Johnny hummed, tucking his face in against Peter’s neck.

 

“’Night, Johnny,” Peter said with a yawn; it wasn’t really as late as it seemed, but a few hours of shuteye wouldn’t hurt anything.

 

“’Night” Johnny mumbled into his neck, even more drained than Peter.

 

“Love you,” Peter tried out the words a while later, knowing full well he was too late, and Johnny had already fallen asleep. Once again, he resolved to ask him.

 

Soon.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this one; I've really not been feeling well. This chapter is sort of like the calm before the storm, but things should start heating up again in Chapter 17.

Peter woke to the faint taste of salt and ashes on his tongue, and wisps of something soft tickling his nose.

 

He snorted reflexively to dislodge blond hair from its attempted invasion of his nose, then froze when Johnny shifted, finally realizing just where he was, and _who_ he was under.

 

He took a slow, deep breath, reveling in his memories of the night before, then slowly let it out as he gently maneuvered Johnny off to the side so he could slip out of bed. For all his efforts, though, Johnny stirred almost as soon as Peter was free, cracking one blue eye open just in time to pin him in place with his boxers half-on.

 

“Time‘s it?” Johnny mumbled, curling face-down into the bed briefly, before rolling onto his back, free of the sheets, and stretching like spines only happened to other people.

 

Peter unironically wolf-whistled at the sight, then yanked up his boxers and checked the clock before his libido got too many ideas. “About… ten to three. AM.”

 

“Damn,” Johnny grumbled, swaying as he sat up properly. “So that’s why I feel like crap.”

 

“Problem?” Peter asked faux-casually, curling a hand around Johnny’s shoulder to steady him.

 

“Nah,” Johnny shook his head, then immediately contradicted himself by leaning it against Peter’s arm, lightheaded. “Just overdue for an IV.”

 

Peter cursed, then gently stroked through all of Johnny’s fluffy blond bedhead. “I screwed up your routine, didn’t I?”

 

Johnny chuckled, then tugged at Peter when he moved to step away; Peter let himself be pulled in, charmed anew by sleepy-slash-naked-Johnny, even though part of his brain was now fixed on the idea of getting Johnny fed. “Best kind of screw-up.” Johnny responded, once Peter was close enough for his liking.

 

“I’m not necessarily disagreeing, but I once got a much larger order than I’d paid for from the pizza guy, and that was pretty magical,” Peter countered in his best ‘sage advice’ impersonation, and even stroked at an imaginary beard when Johnny side-eyed him. Johnny tried to pull his own serious face, but there was a definite upturn to his lips almost immediately. “Come on, up,” Peter coaxed, tugging Johnny to his feet. “Let’s get you some nice non-caged, artisanal, small batch intravenous nutrition.”

 

“Shower first,” Johnny insisted, ducking around Peter’s arms for the drawers, bracing himself against the top with one hand as he rifled for clean clothes with the other.

 

“You could always shower after?” Peter suggested, following after, and maybe draping a not-possessive-at-all hand over his lower back to ‘steady’ him.

 

“There’s still some leftover lube in my ass, and it’s _sticking_ ,” Johnny retorted without heat, elbowing him as part of pulling out a light, pale green sweater because _of course_ Peter’s fingers had inched down Johnny’s crack to check for themselves. Sure enough, either he’d missed some last night when cleaning up or a bit more had leaked out while they slept and partially dried, because there was a semi-tacky residue smeared around his hole.

 

Part of his ‘checking’ _may_ have involved using that residual moisture to slip a finger partway inside, so the elbowing had been fairly deserved.

 

“Real sex is _so_ much messier than porn,” Peter lamented with an overdramatic sigh, then temporarily conceded to Johnny’s shower plans by hunting around for his own clothes.

 

“Porn’s just fantasies with an awful soundtrack; it’s only messy when it wants to be,” Johnny agreed, just about to pick up his bundle of carefully-folded clothes when he saw Peter deliberating over the torn seat of his pants and how much humiliation he was willing to risk today by webbing it shut, and turned back to the drawers to scrounge up a spare pair. Peter lifted a hand to catch the pants before they hit him in the head without looking up.

 

“Thanks,” Peter said, then looked at the pants and wished he hadn’t. “You own salmon-colored jeans?”

 

“That’s not salmon; salmon had more red in it,” Johnny corrected him, looking vaguely affronted by Peter’s apparent color-ignorance. He grabbed up his clothes and clearly tried not to wobble as he marched out of the room. “It’s ‘creamsicle’.”

 

Peter made a face at the ‘creamsicle’ pants, but reluctantly pulled them on anyway. He followed Johnny into the hall, complaining while a small part of his brain worried about running into someone else, because Johnny wasn’t even _trying_ to conceal himself. “Creamsicle is a food, not a color. Why couldn’t they just call it ‘light orange’ or something? Nice and descriptive.”

 

“Salmon’s a food too, dipstick,” Johnny pointed out, slipping into the bathroom, and Peter pouted in the doorframe, waiting for the door to be closed in his face.

 

“That’s not the point, Sparky,” He complained, then tried to change the subject before he lost the debate. “And where do you keep your IV stuff, anyway?”

 

“In the fridge, and it is too the point,” Johnny replied, then set his clothes by the sink and walked into the generously-sized shower stall without giving the door a second glance.

 

Watching Johnny behind the frosted glass shower door as the water kicked on, Peter lost his train of thought for a bit.

 

He was brought out his trance, creamsicle pants already mysteriously unfastened, by Johnny’s voice. “You going to join me, or what?”

 

Peter shook himself back into the present. “Yeah, in a sec. I gotta go grab something.”

 

Johnny’s “Suit yourself,” was nearly lost in the sound of a running shower once Peter ducked out of the room, double-timing it to the kitchen in a borrowed pair of light orange pants and _how was this his life_. He rooted around until he had all the parts to Johnny’s IV setup, struggling more than he wanted to admit with hooking up the bag to the while walking back, even with ‘super sticky spider -grip’.

 

Triumphant at the last moment, he set the prepped IV by Johnny’s clothes while he shut the door and shucked The Pants and his boxers back off.

 

“Pete?” Johnny asked, pausing behind the glass to try and see who’d walked in; Peter could see a fuzzy impression of his face.

 

“Yeah, it’s me,” Peter confirmed, picking the IV back up once he was naked, then cracked the shower door open just enough to slip inside. “Brought you a present.”

 

“Oh yeah?” Johnny asked playfully, expression falling to nonplussed as he registered the IV. “I was already planning on getting one after the shower.”

 

“I know, but I thought ‘Why wait?”,” Peter tried to placate him, but still tried to push the IV into his hands. He _knew_ how important they were, and couldn’t stand the thought of any more delays. “This way, you can relax and get your blood sugar up and whatever else, while I worry about cleaning up.”

 

It was a better solution; he just _knew_ it.

 

“Yeah yeah, okay,” Johnny grumbled a little, but still went through with hooking up the IV. “I’m really starting to hate needles.”

 

Peter watched him for a while, and maybe it was his imagination, or the warm water, or actually the IV, but Johnny already looked a little better. Pinker. “I’ll make it up to you.”

 

“Oh yeah?” Johnny asked, shifting the IV bag from hand to hand. “How?”

 

“Just relax against the wall, here,” Peter replied, maneuvering Johnny until he could rest his chest against the shower wall, one hand bracing the IV bag on top of his shoulder while the other steadied him against slips. He looked Johnny over, nudged his legs further apart, then nodded to himself in satisfaction. “And I’ll start by cleaning up the fun parts.”

 

That said, he lowered himself to his knees, then ghosted his fingers up the back of Johnny’s legs and palmed his asscheeks.

 

Time to clean up the mess he made.

 

* * *

 

Things had been quiet for a week and a half, and Peter was starting to quietly lose his mind.

 

Or, things were _relatively_ quiet, that is.

 

No major attacks on the city, other than one conspiracy nut with some cobbled-together laser grid that tried to block off Times Square, insisting that the advertisements were full of subliminal messages that made New Yorkers complacent to all the frequent disasters and invasions in the city. Peter had had to rely entirely on his spider senses to navigate the invisible lasers so he could shut the rickety machine down before it shorted or something and killed either him, the crazy, or one of many onlookers.

 

For a dangerous nutjob, the guy’d kinda had a point, Peter had decided afterward.

 

Johnny had complained several more times about the eggs feeling ‘restless’, until everyone in the know about the babies was on tenterhooks if he so much as sighed or shifted, waiting for the eggs to hatch and for Johnny to go into ‘labor’. No one really knew what to expect and, as he’d heard Sue half-heartedly complaining to Johnny when they’d finalized the nursery furniture, that uncertainty had pushed Reed into a sort of manic ‘inventing phase’, trying to anticipate any possible complication or eventuality surrounding the births. Everyone in Johnny’s social circles that knew – Peter included – varied from an extreme of proactive protectiveness to unsolvable worry, with no real outlet outside of the children’s births actually happening.

 

Johnny, fretted at on all sides now, had surrendered and rescheduled the last of his in-person appointments for either the following month or telecommuting, and Peter guiltily rejoiced a little on the inside each time Johnny called him to monologue about how stir crazy he was, and how boring and unstimulating his life was.

 

Peter really _enjoyed_ stimulating Johnny; it certainly made life less boring, at least for a little while each time.

 

But still… Peter was on edge, and only getting more wound up the longer that, well, _nothing_ **_happened_**.

 

No major attacks, or catastrophes, or medical emergencies, sudden public opinion shifts, plots… _anything_. The bottom line was this: Peter was happy, so ridiculously happy, and he just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going to come along and ruin everything for him.

 

Because clearly Peter Parker wasn’t meant to be happy, right?

 

He knew, statistically, that it was highly unlikely for someone to be unlucky **_all_** the time, but still…

 

With that not-paranoia in mind, he’d spent his hours away from Johnny’s world of being affectionately smothered tying up any loose ends or uncertainties he could think of.

 

It might not help, in the end, but, well. He knew his own track record when it came to luck, but Johnny –

 

Johnny deserved to be happy, and Peter did _not_ want to be the person to ruin that.

 

That’s why Peter still had the suit on, sans mask and with a list of names tucked in by his cell phone in a pocket, while he massaged Johnny’s shoulders as he looked over paperwork.

 

“I didn’t think ‘being a celebrity’ would generate _this much_ paperwork,” Peter said for probably the third time in the past hour. He shifted his thumbs to apply slightly more pressure to a knot of tension and reopened one of the scabs over his knuckles slightly. It’s a good thing that he’d gone for red gloves, well done past-Peter.

 

“You keep saying that,” Johnny groaned quietly, tipping his head down toward his chest while Peter’s hands swept up the back of his neck, before tipping his head backward so he could look Peter in the eye. “’Death and taxes’, man. What did you think I did all day?”

 

“Before we got together?” Peter shrugged. “I guess expected more partying, or… boats.”

 

“Boats?”

 

“Yeah,” Peter nodded, then released Johnny’s shoulders to pantomime vaguely boat-shaped things. Johnny took the opportunity to turn his chair around to face him. “Like… speed boats, yachts, sailboats, spaceships, maybe a cruise ship…? You know, just. Boats.”

 

“Ever heard of seasickness?” Johnny shook his head, then reached out to tug gently on one of Peter’s hands. Peter resisted for a moment, mentally bracing himself, then sat his secretly battered body down in Johnny’s lap as smoothly as possible. “Pretty sure I’d prematurely puke up an egg if I set foot on a boat right now, with how sick this whole not-a-pregnancy has made me.”

 

Concerned, Peter cupped his cheek. “You’re feeling sick again?”

 

“Since this morning, not sure why,” Johnny confirmed with a shrug, then turned his head to kiss Peter’s palm. He made a face afterward. “Your glove tastes like pennies. Anyway, it’s not a big deal; it’s not as bad as before.”

 

“That’s weird,” Peter deflected, voice high and tight, while a part of him wondered which metallic-tasting thing Johnny’d picked up on. Probably blood, but whose? He refocused on what was important, here. “There has to be a reason for the nausea; do you think it’s an indicator of how close to term you are?”

 

“No idea,” Johnny shrugged nonchalantly, even as his eyes narrowed slightly. “Are you okay?”

 

“Of course I am,” Peter immediately reassured him and wanted to slap himself; that was too quickly. “I mean, I’m not the one pregnant.”

 

“Gravid,” Johnny immediately corrected, then reached up to brush lingering brick dust off of the webbing pattern over his shoulders. “Busy day?”

 

“Not too bad,” Peter shook his head, knowing that news of a sudden rash of crimes would’ve reached the FF one way or another. “Just had to take care of some stuff.”

 

“That doesn’t sound ominous _at all_ ,” Johnny rolled his eyes, then cradled Peter’s jaw, guiding his mouth down for a kiss. He pulled back after a moment, brushing a thumb over probably-a-smudge or something on Peter’s jaw. His brows furrowed slightly, face concerned. “Are you sure you’re okay? Stress isn’t eating at you or anything?”

 

“What stress?” He tried denial one more time, then gave up at the way it made Johnny frown. “Really, hot stuff; I’m no more stressed than expected, considering the light of my life is due to give birth any time now, and no one knows what to expect.”

 

“Yeah, I can understand that, I guess,” Johnny nodded, looking searchingly into Peter’s eyes for a long moment, before glancing away. “You’ve been a little…. I dunno, distant or something, lately. It felt like I’ve had to beg you to stop by.” He looked back at Peter, smiling sheepishly. “I guess I got a little worried, myself. Or spoiled.” His smile fell a little, and suddenly the spider on Peter’s chest was apparently fascinating. “Definitely a hypocrite, considering a couple weeks ago.”

 

Peter felt the bottom fall out of his stomach with guilt, and decided to tell him an only-slightly-edited form of the truth, with a little bit of flattery to help build back up what he’d unintentionally broken down. “Hey, no,” He tipped Johnny’s face back up with one hand while the carding the other through his hair until it was cradling the back of his neck. “I’m sorry, beautiful. I’ve been busy with a little project, trying to get things squared away before the babies get here. I guess I’ve been a little… _single_ - _minded_ about it, since we don’t know when to expect them.” He dipped his own head down a little and made his best ‘sad puppy eyes’. “I’m really sorry.”

 

Johnny tried to resist the shift in mood for a moment, but eventually cracked up. “You’re ridiculous.”

 

“Yep,” Peter grinned dopily, then shuffled a little closer so he could soak the warmth from Johnny’s stomach into sore muscles – it was heavenly.

 

“These papers can wait for a while, so… did you wanna go play Stellar Commander III: Black Hole Squadron or something?”

 

“It has a multiplayer mode?” Reluctant to leave the soothing warmth, Peter stood up regardless, resolved to resume cuddling – as much as playing video games allowed anyway – as soon as they were settled in on the couch.

 

“It has this ‘Pincer Strike’ mode –” that Johnny went on to explain as they got set up, but either Peter was more tired than he’d thought, or his body decided this was the perfect lull of activity to rest and recuperate during; he was nodding off after only twenty minutes of play. He must have fallen asleep sometime after that, because the next thing he was aware of was throwing himself off the couch as it burst into flames.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life seriously got in the way of this chapter, and I'm still not sure if I'm 100% satisfied with it, but... well, it's been something like three or four reworks, and it's at least okay, so have at it.
> 
> I probably just built it up too much in my head to ever 'do it justice' on 'paper'.
> 
> Oh, head's up - more vomiting coming your way.

Peter’s body rolled to a stop against the television by the time his brain fully woke up.

 

He blinked at a kaleidoscope of colorful pixels _far_ closer than their suggested viewing distance, then scrambled to reorient himself. “Where’s the fire?”

 

“You’re – ” Johnny’s reply was cut short by a choking sound, and Peter scrambled around to try and help him. Roughly one-third of his body was on fire at any one moment, and Peter hesitated briefly until he could safely touch his shoulders and straighten him out of his protective curl on the couch. “ – **_not_** funny.”

 

“Shh, I’m sorry, you know how I can get sometimes,” Peter babbled in a hopefully soothing manner, watching as Johnny reached out for the flames that were starting to take hold on the couch and pulled them back to himself, swallowing thickly. He absently adjusted one hand to Johnny’s ribs just before his shoulder ignited, and tensed his legs for action. “How can I help?”

 

“My – ” Johnny coughed violently, and a wave of heat rushed over Peter, then he swallowed again, reflexively. Thankfully, the couch didn’t combust this time. Much, anyway. “Think it’s the babies.”

 

“Right. The babies. **Right** , okay,” Focusing on that bit of information, Peter _got his **act together**_ , _damn it_. Panicking and/or punching his way out of this would help exactly _no_ one; he had to _think_. Pulling his focus away from the way Johnny clutched his stomach anxiously was difficult, but it left him in a position to register the activation of the fire alarm. It had an odd, almost sedate cadence, and that was about as much as Peter could distance himself from Johnny’s distress for arbitrary acoustic analyses. “Reed and the others are on their way, I’m sure. You’re okay, we’re okay, everything’ll be fine.” Reluctantly, he took a step back when Johnny gagged and flared up again, going so far as to float up above the couch in an unhappy curl, then stepped forward again despite the lingering heat when he saw Johnny swallowing again. “Hey, hey, no, stop; I think you need to let, uh… _things_ happen.”

 

Johnny lifted his head up enough to give Peter a baleful stare, both eyes and his left cheek currently alight. “ ** _No_** , really? Nothing’s –” He hugged his arms around himself and dry heaved once, twice, and now that he was airborne Peter could see how badly he shook afterward. He managed not to compulsively swallow, though. “Nothing’s ready to come up, yet.”

 

Peter’s mind started racing. “No, yeah, okay, that makes sense, with them all stuck together like that. So, are they all going to come out together, or are they supposed to separate inside? Wait, hatching inside, right, I remember. I guess these’re sorta like contractions, then? But then –”

 

“ _Not_. **_Helping_** ,” Johnny gritted out, all of his non-flaming skin having taken on a definite gray color under the orange light of the rest of him. In retrospect, Johnny _probably_ didn’t want to look too closely at what his body was trying to do, even if thinking it through helped Peter stay relatively calm himself. He could just… do that in his head, instead.

 

“Sorry,” he mumbled lamely.

 

Johnny relaxed slightly, though his posture still looked noticeably strained. “Yeah, whatever.” An especially large tongue of flame flicked up from Johnny’s shoulder toward the ceiling, and he dipped down unsteadily to compensate. ”Wish I could flame back off.”

 

Peter had suspected as much, but thought about it in more depth while Johnny pressed a fist against his mouth, particularly considering just how… _flammable_ the guest suite was proving to be.

 

“We should probably head for the labs,” He began, walking closer again and shuffling around Johnny, trying to see if there was any way he could let him rest and carry him down there, but there were no places to grab him that lasted more than a minute, from the look of things. He’d end up jostling Johnny around an awful lot, but who knew how well Johnny could walk or fly down there without either lighting the building on fire or collapsing again.

 

He was already going to have nightmares about Johnny collapsing, they didn’t need any _extra_ material to draw from. Nope.

 

A peculiar expression stole over Johnny’s face, though, and he shook his head, then put a hand over his mouth. His halting reply was muffled, but still distinguishable enough from Peter’s proximity. “No, I – I need to – _out_. I need to get outside.”

 

“What?” Peter asked, baffled by what Johnny could need out there, especially at this time of year. “Why?”

 

“The sun –” Johnny started, his own expression unsure, then bent over wheezing into his fist.

 

“It’s the middle of _October_ ,” Peter dismissed the idea immediately; sure, outside had fewer ignition risks than staying indoors, but there were plenty of fireproof tools and rooms in the labs, not to mention the issue of sanitation and the babies’ health. He saw his opening, and curled his hands around Johnny’s hips right as they extinguished, still almost-searingly hot, and tugged him like a giant, flaming balloon toward the elevators. “Besides, there’s plenty of fireproof spaces in the labs, you know that.”

 

“No, you don’t understand, I–,” Johnny started, and Peter felt as the space between his hands, along Johnny’s spine, flared with a fissure of heat that quickly went to his head, completely engulfing it and leaving him temporarily dazed.

 

The elevator chimed serenely behind Peter in the relative quiet.

 

“Took you long enough,” Peter called out, pulling his focus away from Johnny just long enough to make sure it was, actually, Sue and Reed walking out, instead of, say, one of the creeps on his ‘hit list’ that he hadn’t gotten to yet, knowing his luck.

 

“We thought it best to bring some supplies with us,” Sue answered, gesturing expressively with a scanner in her hand as the flames over Johnny’s body lessened significantly – leaving only Johnny’s hair and a stripe down his shoulders and back still on fire – and Peter could properly feel the weight of him in his hands. Even though it was no trouble for him to hold Johnny up, Johnny still pushed at Peter’s shoulders until he set him back down on the floor. Almost immediately, Sue reached out to touch Johnny, but he took a cautionary step back.

 

Sue’s brow furrowed but she didn’t follow him, instead activating the handheld scanner and waving it in Johnny’s direction so it could presumably tell her what she couldn’t figure out by hand. “How’re you feeling, baby brother?”

 

“Think I’m losing a tenant,” Johnny joked half-heartedly, and Peter watched with laser focus as he wobbled on his feet a little, carefully holding a hand over his stomach again. Reed walked up behind Sue to check her readings over her shoulder, arms stretched back behind him into the elevator, one hand rummaging in a box that looked only vaguely familiar, while the other retracted toward them, towing the high-temperature metal table/bed that Peter recognized from Johnny’s emergency surgery weeks ago.

 

He… had not missed that thing.

 

“He’s been flaring up sporadically, usually in time with the urge to throw up something that’s not ready to come out yet,” Peter piped up, trying to metaphorically yank himself back into the present, but he couldn’t help thinking about the fact that Johnny threw up _then_ , too. “We were just on our way to the labs.”

 

“I _told_ you, I don’t need to go to the labs; I need to g- _urgh_ ,” Johnny gurgled strangely at the end, fire spreading down to the backs of his knees. Like a spider-moth to the flames, Peter tried to move in to hold him, just as Johnny tried to wave him away, and ultimately Peter got thumped pretty solidly in the chest, which hurt a **_lot_** more than he’d anticipated.

 

Oh. Right. He’d forgotten for a bit there that he was all banged up from his clean-up job earlier.

 

Johnny took the time offered by his stunned realization to straighten himself out again, somewhat. He managed to get one word out before he started dry heaving more violently than before. “ ** _Outside_**.” Peter could see the muscles of his back straining from the force, flames glowing bigger, brighter, and hotter over his spine almost like a dimetrodon’s sail.

 

“Why do you want to go outside?” Sue asked, free hand held before her eyes to block some of the light, forcefield snapping to life between her and the heat. Peter missed Johnny’s shaky attempt at answering as he realized something, and looked around.

 

“Where’s Ben?” He asked Reed.

 

“He’s watching the children,” Reed responded distractedly, donning a pair of protective lenses before twisting his head out around Sue’s barrier. Peter followed him as he contracted back behind the barrier, practically wilting in relief when he moved out from the direct heat; apparently, the heat was taking more of a toll on him than he’d thought.

 

“I thought he’d want to be here, if for no other reason than to point and laugh,” He said, obediently taking the bottle Reed handed to him. He held the bottle still as Reed extracted some of its liquid contents into a robust metal syringe that honestly looked like it belonged more in the 1800s than a state of the art research center.

 

“I thought the same, at first,” Reed agreed, quickly extending his hands to administer the syringe into the crook of a flame-free elbow, then snapping back into shape. “In the end, I believe his stomach and the desire not to suffer through sympathetic vomiting proved more powerful than the urge to make mischief.”

 

“Huh,” Peter said, considering. “I guess I always pictured him with an iron stomach. Or some kind of tough stone, anyway. Like granite or something.” He took a half-step forward as Johnny tucked his legs up away from the floor again, wheezing loudly.

 

“We need to go, Hot Stuff,” Peter called out. “This kind of heat in here is dangerous!”

 

“Perhaps we should wait until the flames subside again, or we won’t be able to withstand the close quarters inside the elevator,” Reed disagreed, and Peter turned to look back at the elevator, considering. It wasn’t the _smallest_ elevator he’d ever been in, but it _was_ a considerably more confined space.

 

“Maybe we should go in groups,” Sue suggested over Peter’s shoulder, and it sounded like she’d turned to look at the elevator, too. “You and Peter could go ahead and finalize the preparations, and I can use my force fields to keep myself _and_ the building safe while riding with Johnny.”

 

It was a reasonable plan, but it nagged at Peter all the same. “I don’t know… Wouldn’t you be more help for the prep work?”

 

“Nonsense, Peter,” Reed answered, resting a hand on Peter’s shoulder with a gentle squeeze. “You’re more than qualified to help with this.” The praise made Peter feel warm.

 

Or it could’ve just been Johnny flaring up again.

 

Hey, wait.

 

He was still behind the –

 

Off to the side, and therefore not shielded by Sue’s current barrier, the glass of the window rippled, and rapidly began to glow with heat. Nothing else around it seemed as affected, and it took Peter a moment to realize what that meant. A moment in which Johnny fully engulfed in flames and rocketed through the hole he had just melted into the window.

 

“Johnny!” Reed yelled.

 

“Come back!” Sue shouted after him.

 

Peter tucked his arms in close, and dove out through the hole after him.

 

His aim through the painfully-hot ring of molten glass was a bit off, but his body passed through the opening fine, even if some of his costume may-or-may-not-have melted. Once clear, he turned end-over-end and shot a webline out, back at the Baxter Building. His tumble through the air had shown no sign of a flame trail or other indication of Johnny’s path.

 

Shoulders protesting, he twisted his momentum to launch himself up toward the roof of the building, originally intending on using the height to get a better look at the city, until he noticed a new beacon of light on top of the roof.

 

Peter crawled over the edge of the roof just in time to get a face-full of scorching air. He coughed at the suddenness of it, face turned down into the rooftop until his lungs were done spasming, then looked back up. Johnny was only halfway ignited for now, flames lashing out erratically around him, floating about fifteen feet above the surface of the roof itself, face turned up toward the sun, even as the rest of his body tried to hunch in on itself.

 

“Didn’t your sister teach you not to look directly at the sun?” Peter called out, standing up only to immediately duck under a gout of flame, maneuvering as close to Johnny as he could stand; Johnny just huffed a wheezy laugh. “Okay, so we’re outside like you wanted,” He rolled behind an antenna structure as the place he’d been standing before was bombarded with a geyser of embers. “I’m guessing you won’t consider going back inside now, will you?”

 

“Not safe,” Johnny answered, voice crackling like tinder dropped into a kiln; elsewhere on the roof, a familiar, serene chime sounded. “I couldn’t – hold it _in_ – anymore.” Peter could see a definite shake in the shimmering line of Johnny’s shoulders as he panted shallowly.

 

Peter couldn’t help but pant in time with him, albeit for different reasons.

 

Abruptly, relief from the worst of the heat formed in front of him in the form of one of Sue’s force fields. “P – Spider-man! Are you all right?” Sue called out, and Peter could just see where she and Reed had appeared around the corner of an air conditioning unit.

 

“I’m fine, but Sparky over here’s about three steps from going nuclear,” he called back, carefully trying to navigate the roof toward the two of them so Sue didn’t have to maintain so many force fields, even as it killed him to be further away from Johnny. He almost turned right back around, force field or no force field, when Johnny made a high pitched, distressed sound.

 

“Hang in there, son!” Reed called out, now fully decked out in protective equipment. He adjusted something on his goggles, then asked something aside to Sue that Peter couldn’t catch. As he got closer, though, he heard part of Sue’s reply.

 

“ – said something about the sunlight, but I’m not certain what effect it could be having, on him _or_ the babies.”

 

“We might just have to wait and see,” Reed concluded, clearly dissatisfied with the answer but without a better one. “Ah, Spider-man, could you assist me?”

 

“With what?” Peter asked, even as he grabbed the metal table that the two had been pulling behind them from the elevator.

 

“We need to get closer,” Reed said in lieu of answering, then nodded to Sue. Sue nodded back, then started advancing the three of them back toward Johnny, curving her force wall more and more into a bubble as they drew closer and needed the extra protection. “Can you tell how close you are now, Johnny?”

 

Johnny retched before he could reply, tearing his gaze away from the sun so he could curl in on himself. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand when he straightened out again, but Peter could see no evidence of vomit or stomach acid; it must have burned away. “Soon, I think,” he gasped.

 

“You can do it, honey, I’m so sorry,” Peter blurted out, really **_struck_** for the first time with how miserable this must be for him, from the very beginning. If he’d just… kept it in his pants, Johnny wouldn’t be in the position he currently was.

 

But, then… they also probably wouldn’t be together, either. It made his heart hurt.

 

He zoned back in from his pity-party in time to remove his fingers from the dents they left in the table before Reed gestured him for him to park it. He waited, nearly vibrating in place, as Reed and Sue discussed Reed’s calculations, and the wild whips of flame off Johnny’s body started to change into something… more organized. Instead of wildly flaring out from his body, they began to stretch out in more controlled loops, like miniaturized versions of solar prominences. Johnny’s body completely ignited again as the loops began to stabilize instead of breaking.

 

It was almost pretty, except for how it made Johnny throw up vaporized stomach acid again.

 

“ – see how the structure, there is – hang in there a little longer, Johnny!” Peter caught the tail end of Reed’s mumbling, then flinched reflexively when he changed volume to shout to Johnny. Johnny, still hacking, tried to throw a thumbs’ up in their general direction.

 

Suddenly, Johnny choked on a breath, and the light and heat pouring out from his body spiked higher, and Peter could feel his eyes watering. He really should look away, he needed to, but he _couldn’t_ yet, because –

 

Because Johnny was still choking, and hadn’t taken another breath, yet.

 

 “Johnny!” He screamed, forgetting himself momentarily and trying to move toward him, only to run into the back side of Sue’s force field.

 

“Calm down, Peter!” Reed scolded him, even as Sue struggled to readjust the force field around them into a hemisphere, the heat was so intense. “This is progress.”

 

“Progress?” Peter scoffed, finally able to tear his eyes away to glare at Reed, gesturing back wildly to Johnny, to his hands helplessly gripping his throat, and his body curled into the fetal position. It was hard to tell through the flames, but Peter imagined the look of wide-eyed panic that must be on his face out there. “He’s suffocating!”

 

“It’s the baby!” Reed shouted back, though Peter barely heard him through the blood rushing in his ears. “It’s almost over!”

 

Peter tried to turn back to see for himself, but the light was just too intense, blinding him before he turned even halfway to face him. All he could do, in the end, was listen anxiously and metaphorically wring his hands, until he heard a desperate, liquid sound, and the light began to dim again.

 

As soon as he could bear it, Peter turned searching eyes to the air. Johnny had half-turned away from them during the struggle to breath from the look of things; mouth slack, he straightened into a ‘standing’ hover above the rooftop, head bent over his cupped palms, and the brilliant little star he held there. As the pair slowly descended Peter was able to pick out more detail of the tiny glowing shape – a vaguely oblong shape, and a tiny arm no bigger around than one of his fingers from the look of it – and the urge to just… _hold_ this tiny life hit him like a brick to the face and a streetlight to the gut combined.

 

Johnny’s flame flickered strangely, and Peter frowned to himself, pushing gently but insistently at Sue’s force field as he tried to figure out what he’d seen. It wasn’t _quite_ his spider sense, but –

 

“Johnny? Are you all right?” Sue called out, voice tight. Absently, Peter registered a change in the quality of her barrier, but refrained from investigating further in favor of watching the flicker of Johnny’s flames. There was almost a pattern to it, if he could just –

 

“Can you determine whether the child is breathing or not?” Reed asked from beyond Peter’s field of view, accompanied by a variety of modulating electronic tones. There it was again! Almost as if –

 

Johnny keened, high and pained, and Peter completely lost his focus. He watched Johnny’s shoulders shake and heave as he tried to hold his breath so soon after suffocating, checking for the feel and sound of much smaller breaths. He dimmed noticeably throughout the process, then dropped to barely one foot off the ground as he gasped.

 

“Think sho,” Johnny slurred, and Peter finally saw up close what he’d been missing at range.

 

Johnny wasn’t intentionally dimming his flames, but the baby was… pulling them from him to bolster its own fading light.

 

“Why’re you talking so strange? Did you hurt yourself?” Sue pressed, and Peter felt the exact moment the bubble of energy surrounding them turned into more of a wall.

 

A wall he could move around and finally get back to Johnny, to be exact. He darted out into the intense but once again manageable heat, circling restlessly around the pair but unable to touch them through the flames.

 

“Night’a,” Johnny panted open-mouthed, tipping his hands so Peter could see the baby better, though he had to squint hard, standing so close. “Dith – dishlocated… ny shaw.”

 

It took Peter a moment to parse Johnny’s thick, garbled words, but turned a critical to Johnny’s enflamed jaw once he had.

 

Reed stretched out beyond the barrier, one hand on the metal table and the other on a scanner. “I think it would be best if we went back inside now so we can evaluate the both of you, and… get the little lady somewhere warm and comfortable.”

 

“Ye’ cun tell?” Johnny asked, extinguishing all but the faintest flicker of flame through his hair as his feet touched the ground. His sheer exhaustion was immediately apparent, though, as Peter lunged to support him when his legs refused.

 

In the sea of helplessness that today had become, _this_ was something he could do.

 

Ignoring the burn of residual heat against his inner arms, Peter gently deposited Johnny on the table, and only let go once he’d coaxed Johnny into lying down, baby cradled against his sternum.

 

“I’ve matched her readings to ones I’ve taken before,” Reed confirmed, gently retracting his arm to get the table moving toward the elevator. The more Peter looked at the little body that, honestly, didn’t look like any baby he’d seen before, the more he understood Johnny’s surprise.

 

She looked more like a naked mole rat or an alien than a baby. Peter loved her already.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, long time no see. I mentioned it elsewhere a few days ago, but I’m back (although not under the greatest circumstances), and now I finally have something to show for it. This chapter was not originally supposed to go like this, so it’s probably a little wonky. Anyway, here yo go. See the end notes for a clearer translation of Johnny's lines if they're giving you trouble.

“– Nah’. Shust… nah’. I’n – I’n not gonna dishkush thish oo-ith ya until yer hack in oo-unn heese.”

 

Peter’s nose flared in the moist, recirculated air of his borrowed heat suit, but he managed to bite back his initial response. He just… Why was this such a big deal, anyway? “At least let someone fix your jaw before you get permanent nerve damage or something.”

 

“Like I cun shust _lee-hh_ here righ’ now,” Johnny slurred dismissively, and as if to prove his point, embers popped up over his arm like glowing freckles, glowing redder and more diffusely in the light coming off the heating elements around the room than Peter was used to seeing. A moment later, the embers followed the same path that all of Johnny’s flare-ups had since the delivery, pulling away from his skin and into the golf ball sized sac of what looked like lava that their daughter was curled around.

 

Their daughter.

 

They had a _daughter_ now. Together.

 

Besotted all over again, he uncurled his hands from their previous vice-like grip around his biceps, then reached out to her, only to grunt in surprise when the burned skin of his hands, shoulders, and inner arms complained at the movement.

 

Not to be outdone, the various bruises over his body also took the opportunity to make their displeasure known.

 

Surreptitiously, he glanced away from their daughter’s tiny squishy features to where Johnny sat slumped with one arm trailing into her tiny bed, only to stop short at blue eyes turned brownish red by the light, and the anguish he saw there.

 

“ _Hlease_ ,” Johnny mumbled miserably, and now Peter wished Johnny was still mad. It was easier not to feel like a heel when he was mad. “Guh get hetter?”

 

Part of Peter still wanted to argue; so, he got burned jumping through the window and grabbing Johnny after the delivery, he’d heal in a while and it shouldn’t be such a big deal, really. The rest of him, though, knew that things would be better if he wasn’t in the room again until he was healed up and less liable to make Johnny regularly deflate like a leaky balloon.

 

So… he’d go. For now.

 

There were monitors in the observation room, at least. He’d just go hole up in there for a while. But first –

 

“All right, I’ll go, _but_ –,” he conceded, and then continued on before Johnny could try to stumble through an interjection. “I’m gonna send Sue in to force field your jaw back into place for you.”

 

“Uh huh, shure,” Johnny agreed, still giving Peter that same miserable look. Not liking the idea of leaving Johnny looking like that, but lacking access to most of his preferred options, Peter carefully curled an arm around Johnny’s shoulders in a half hug. When he wasn’t immediately rebuffed, he leaned his helmeted head against Johnny’s temple.

 

He held the position as Johnny slowly, so slowly relaxed under his arm.

 

Then he made a serious of obnoxious ‘kissy face’ noises at him.

 

“Curses, foiled again,” he pouted exaggeratedly when Johnny looked up at him questioningly, to which he snorted and grumbled something unintelligible.

 

“Mwah!” Peter smacked his lips loudly one last time, then reluctantly let go. Johnny made a half-hearted swipe at him that turned into more of a caress right at the end, and then Peter was retreating into the room’s new airlock to wait out the cool-down cycle.

 

There was a hum of activity waiting for him on the other side of the ‘cool’ door, Reed having upgraded the diagnostic and remote-care machines to collect and interpret even more data (as well as, Peter suspected, connecting it to some of his other, more sensitive projects so he can oversee everything from the one location). The man himself had his face buried in the viewing optics of one part of the workstation, one hand making minute adjustments to the viewer while the other made notes on a computer three positions over. If not for the ear stretched out to hover near the intercom system, Reed might’ve seemed completely oblivious to the world.

 

Peter’s step faltered when it occurred to him that Reed probably heard their entire… disagreement.

 

“Hey, Reed,” Peter greeted lamely, continuing his trek into the room.

 

“Peter,” Reed acknowledged him, turning his head from the viewer just long enough to sketch out a diagram on the computer before returning to his work.

 

“Have you seen Sue around, lately?” He asked, while trying to decide on the best way to ask how much Reed had heard.

 

Reed hummed under his breath, rotating one of the viewer’s smaller dials counter-clockwise, before answering. “I’ve already asked her to come down. She wanted to make sure the children had dinner.”

 

“Right,” Peter scrubbed a hand through his sweaty hair; so, he had heard it, then, or at least the last part of it. “Then I’m just gonna… take a seat over here.” He sat down in the chair nearest the main observation screen, and dumped his suit’s helmet by his feet.

 

Near-silence reigned between the two of them for a while, until Reed coughed quietly. “Peter – that is, it’s a – it’s normal to have disagreements in any, ah, relationship –“

 

“I know,” Peter interrupted quickly, caught in the weird no man’s land between embarrassed by getting relationship advice from his boyfriend’s brother-in-law, and mildly offended that Reed seemed to feel he _needed_ the advice, at all. “I’ve uh, had relationships before, you know. Lots of ’em.”

 

Reed cleared his throat once, then again before he could reply. “I’m aware.”

 

Things definitely shifted further in favor of ‘embarrassed’ then, but Reed, bless him, still seemed determined to have this conversation neither of them wanted.

 

“It can be… different, when both parties have powers.” Reed tried, haltingly, then quickly continued when Peter made a move to interrupt; impressive, considering Reed couldn’t see him. Probably. “Each combination of powers plays out differently! Um. That is to say, there’s an interpersonal factor, but each side of the equation is changed depending on the power acting upon that… individual’s temperament and paradigm.”

 

Peter straightened in his chair slightly. “What’re you getting at, exactly?”

 

“I think this is a conversation you should have with Johnny, once you’ve both had time to calm down and recover,” Reed evaded, then turned to try and give him an encouraging smile, which would have been more successful if his ear wasn’t still stretched away from his head like an antenna. “But in my experience, it helps to consider all the variables of a problem, such as what your major priorities would be, if you had Johnny’s powers instead of your own.”

 

Peter thought about that as Reed went back to work, passively watching as the baby sucked in Johnny’s random flare-ups on the monitor. He hummed a greeting at Sue as the entered then moved to greet Reed, then tilted his head slightly as she appeared on the monitor a while later.

 

_“Hey, baby brother, how’re you holding up?” Sue greeted Johnny, voice affectionate but somewhat muted through the suit and the intercom’s speaker._

_“Hey, Shoo,” Johnny murmured back, reaching out with his free hand for a hug before abruptly shrinking back._

Peter blinked.

 

_“Shoe? What kinda name is that for your big sis?” Sue teased him, making a show of wrapping a force field around her suit, then wrapping Johnny up in a hug anyway._

_“Hey, carehull; I night –”_

_“Oh hush; I’m safe twice over,” Sue steamrolled over Johnny’s halfhearted protesting._

Peter narrowed his eyes. Was that –?

 

_Giving Johnny one last squeeze, she let go in favor of cupping Johnny’s slack jaw carefully, exploring the area of the joint with the tips of her fingers. “What about this, though? I don’t see too much swelling yet, but how’s the pain? Do you want me to get you an anesthetic or muscle relaxant before I put it back in place?”_

_“Shust geddit oh-ther oo-ith,” Johnny replied, voice tight and slurred even more heavily from pain._ Guiltily, Peter realized this was the first time he’d considered that having a dislocated jaw might be hurting Johnny. And he’d went and had a whole argument with him earlier – or most of one, anyway.

 

_“All right then; I’ll try to be quick,” Sue agreed, voice soft. “Once I’m done, though, try not to open your mouth wide if you can help it, and support your jaw as much as you can while it recovers.”_

_“Gonna hurdit again oo-ith the neksht oo-unn,” Johnny pointed out, resigned._

_“That can’t really be helped,” Sue agreed. “But look at it this way –” Suddenly, she shifted his grip on Johnny’s head and popped his jaw back into the joints. “It’s not as painful as regular labor, at least.”_

_Johnny let out a strangled whimper_ and Peter cringed in sympathy.

 

_Sue took a moment to move Johnny’s free arm so that it rested along the top of the baby’s bed, guiding his head forward until he could cushion his jaw against his forearm, and then stepped around to the other side of the bed, either to remain in Johnny’s field of vision or just to see the baby. Probably both. “So?”_

_“Hm?” Johnny asked, not moving from the position she’d put him in other than with his eyes._

_“You guys had already decided on a name, right?”_

_Johnny looked back at the baby, humming thoughtfully. He kept this up until Sue started to lose her patience, before letting out a rather smug, “Mmhmm.”_

_“I’ll go ask Peter, so you can keep your big mouth shut,” Sue teased while ever-so-lightly running one gloved finger down the baby’s tiny, tiny leg. She just chuckled as Johnny whined sadly, like a kicked puppy, and then turned to the airlock with a parting wave._

Sue escaped from the airlock the moment it released, hands already reaching to pull off her helmet and readjust her flattened hair. “That went better than I was expecting, even without painkillers.”

 

Reed hummed in agreement, and Peter stood up. “Will he be okay?”

 

Sue tipped one hand from side to side. “For the most part. He’ll be more susceptible to dislocations in the future, though, especially with so many dislocations in a row coming up.”

 

He sucked air in over his teeth with a cringe. “Yeah…” Reed hummed again in agreement.

 

Sue turned away from him to look at Reed. “What are you working on, anyway?”

 

Actually… that was a fair question; Peter turned to face Reed, too. Looking up into both of their expectant faces, Reed shuffled his feet, returning to normal proportions as he did so.

 

“I was – well, I redesigned Johnny’s nutrition system to better manage the heat, but I wanted to test the nutrient cocktails before administering a faulty dose.”

 

“It _has_ been a while since he ate anything,” Sue agreed, then walked over to peck Reed on the cheek. “You take care of that, and then get some food for yourself upstairs.”

 

“I really think someone should stay down here with –,” Reed started to say, only to be interrupted twice.

 

“Ben can –,” Sue argued, until Peter overrode both of them.

 

“I’ll do it!” He insisted, straightening his posture when they both looked at him. “Ben’s been, like, watching the kids all day; he’s probably exhausted. Or,” He shrugged. “He’s been banished to an alternate reality full of beagles. One or the other. And besides,” he pointed out reasonably. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere anytime soon.”

 

After the conclusion of Reed’s tests and a few more of Peter’s reasonable observations, he settled into one of the workstations seats sideways while Reed and Sue changed completely out of their heat suits, and then jumped when he felt his hip vibrating against the seat back. Right, his phone. He had one of those.

 

“Page us if something comes up,” Sue was saying as he unfastened the heat suit enough to get to his tattered regular suit and the phone he’d forgotten was in its pocket.

 

Uh oh – he had a **_lot_** of texts and missed calls.

 

He started scrolling through them as Sue continued. “I doubt any of us will be sleeping tonight so any rest we can get now will –”

 

“Actually,” Peter cut her off, then turned his phone screen toward them even though it would likely be illegible from that distance. “What, uh, are your policy on visitors, and do you happen to have a couple extra suits lying around…?”

 

“For whom?” Reed asked, neck stretching over Sue’s shoulder to bring his head close enough to read the message.

 

“My aunt,” Peter replied, swiping over to another conversation. “And one of my best friends – the one that already knows about me and Johnny.”

 

“You’d have to double-check with Johnny,” Sue replied, gesturing to the monitor… where it was clear Johnny had fallen asleep in his chair, slumped over the baby’s bed railing slightly, newly insulated IV system curling around his cheek to his inner elbow.

 

When it became clear that Johnny wasn’t likely to wake up again for some time under his own power, Sue huffed, amused.

 

“Always the little troublemaker,” she turned to Peter. “I’m sure it’ll be fine, especially if you warn them that they’re sleeping.”

 

“Yeah, of course,” Peter agreed, glad to be seeing MJ and May, while also trying not to panic as he worked out what to text them in reply.

 

Oh, boy. He had a feeling this would _not_ go well.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [No. Just… no. I’m – I’m not gonna discuss this with you until you’re back in one piece]
> 
> [Like I can just leave here right now.]
> 
> [Please. Go get better?]
> 
> [Uh huh, sure.]
> 
> [Hey, Sue.]
> 
> [Hey, careful; I might –]
> 
> [Just get it over with]
> 
> [Gonna hurt it again with the next one.]


End file.
